I haven't seen a diary in a while that specifically covers the national debt. I hope to put some of this debt into perspective.
Earlier tonight, I was reading an article about one of the world's billionaires and I wondered, how many of the world's richest people would it take to pay off the US National Debt? More than I expected...flip...
First, I went to the Forbes site that lists the world's 100 billionaires, albeit indepent from Kings/Queens or other people whose wealth comes from their title/government. (For those in the UK, I'm using the US version of billion, as in 10 to the 9th power, and trillion, as in 10 to the 12th.)
The US debt at the time of this writing is:
$ 8 , 6 7 8 , 2 2 3 , 2 0 1 , 1 2 0 . 0 8
The US debt ceiling is $9 trillion.
I find it rather easy to imagine $50 million. Once I get over about $100 million, I just can't see what anyone would do with that much money, let alone what it would be like owing that amount to anyone.
That said, I know these billionaires have multiple homes, cars, boats, planes, etc. They pay people to do all of their work. I'm sure many on the list have never cleaned a toilet, changed a diaper, or made their own meals. (Yes, many of them have risen from poverty/middle class to uber-rich, but that's not the point of my argument.) The point is that they have much more money than Middle-class Me can comprehend.
So I started adding up all of the net worth of these richest people. I started with Bill Gates at $50 billion. Nice chunk of change.
By the time I got through all 100 billionaires (38 of whom live in the US), I had this meager total:
$1 , 1 4 2 , 1 0 0 , 0 0 0, 0 0 0
Just over one thousand billion. Not enough to pay off our debt.
In other words, we'd need the equivalent of EIGHT TIMES the wealth of the 100 richest people in the world.
Or to put it another way, to pay off our national debt, we'd need the equivalent of 172 Bill Gates.
We must make sure our Democratic congress reigns in the purse strings, starting with this costly war. This is a national crisis.