This Simple Chart Puts the American Debt in Terms Anyone Can Understand

With the congressional budget deal that was passed in the early hours of Thursday, America narrowly missed crashing through the so-called debt ceiling.

Had policymakers waited only a couple more hours, the federal government would have, technically, defaulted on our loans, sending the country — and the world — into an economic tailspin (especially had we not found a quick solution). America would be unable to finance various organs of the federal government. Being the global power we are, there would be a tremendous international backlash. 

It's heady macro economics, right? Currently, the national debt is pushing $17 trillion. It can be hard for an average person, looking at all of those zeros, to visualize what that even means. What do you buy with that money? Why do you need so much money? And isn't that much debt an insanely bad thing?

Economic policy is, of course, complicated. National debt is a complex problem, with numerous solutions that may or may not work (depending on who you ask). Political arguments on how to fix the debt range from austerity, to privatization, to public-private spending, to printing more money, to increasing the amount of money we can borrow from other nations, etc., etc. 

But what if we boil macro economics into micro economics? A nation saying it can no longer pay its debts is akin to a reckless spender with too much credit card debt going into bankruptcy, as this chart lays out:

Is this too simple? Macro economics aren't microeconomics, but do the same principles apply? Weigh in below!

Here are some national debt facts: 

- $1 trillion = $1,000 billion or $1,000,000,000,000 (that's 12 zeros)

- How hard is it to spend a trillion dollars? If you spent one dollar every second, you would have spent a million dollars in 12 days. At that same rate, it would take you 32 years to spend a billion dollars. But it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.

- Deficit = money government takes in - money government spends

- 2012 US deficit = $1.33 trillion

- 2013 Proposed budget deficit = $901 billion

- National debt = Total amount borrowed over time to fund the annual deficit

- Current national debt = $15.3 trillion (or $49,030 per every man, woman and child in the US or $135,773 per taxpayer)

and this does not count the "off the books" debt promised for Social Security, Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Plans, Government Pensions, and so on.....

http://www.policymic.com/articles/this-simple-chart-puts-the-american-debt-in-terms-anyone-can-understand