The American federal government has a serious spending problem. The federal debt, the sum total of all the money the government has borrowed, has hit $21 trillion, with a cool $1 trillion of that coming from Trump’s first year in office. That is, undeniably, a lot of money, and media outlets all over the country are crowing about it being the first time a single-year deficit has been so high, but it simply isn’t so. Even by fairly kind calculations, it’s happened at least three times before—once under George W. Bush and at least twice under Barack Obama. Regardless, the federal debt is soaring, and eventually, that debt is going to come due. And when it does, what does that mean for Americans individually and on the whole? Join Antony Davies and James Harrigan as they discuss this and more on this week’s episode of Words and Numbers.
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Quick Hits
Self-driving car fatality
A cure for MS?
Foolishness of the Week: Internet tax
Topic of the Week: Trillion dollar deficit
Trillion dollar deficit
Why the deficit doesn’t match the change in the debt
How the government counts student loan debt
Federal government financial statements
Money supply
Inflation
Social Security outlays
Debt
treasurydirect.gov
Official deficit
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Antony Davies
Antony Davies is associate professor of economics at Duquesne University and Chief Academic Officer at FreedomTrust.
He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
