em2nought wrote:Here's another site that puts it at more like $200,000 with only 81 million something citizens filing in 2009.
First, it's not 2009. That was actually a long time ago. Second, that 81 million dollar figure is tax returns filed, not citizens filing. Something like 45% of those returns were married couples filing jointly, and so represent two taxpayers. Third, the decision to restrict the set of "federal tax payers" to federal income taxpayers is always a red flag that the overall point is being fabricated to meet an agenda. At last count (back in 2012 or 2010) there were something like 125 million federal income taxpayers. Federal payroll taxpayers? That's a much larger number that almost certainly exceeds 200 million adults.
em2nought wrote:But the national debt doesn't actually cover everything that the gov't owes, and that's not even taking into account state or city governments.
That's certainly true. But the scare mongering that goes on with debt isn't much more valid there either. The problem with all of it is that it projects debt forward, but not income. You'll see stuff like Medicare "future obligations" are like $70T. Which might be true. They might not be, because what we pay out in Medicare is to some degree under our control. But a statement like that ignores a few things. It ignores that it is accumulating expected spending over many decades. And it does so while ignoring the fact that we are generating income over those same decades. For scale, assuming an annual growth of 0%, the US economy is expected to generate around $700T in the next 40 years.
The lesson to learn here is that managing the US economy is nothing like managing your household finances. Also, big numbers are scary and make for good headlines. But it's all relative. I'd certainly be fine with having less national debt, but our current level of national debt isn't that concerning, unless you don't understand what it means.
