"Do you realize that's equivalent to someone who makes $100k a year having ~$70k in credit card debt? That's not "normal"- that's the person that has the Dr. Ph

"Do you realize that's equivalent to someone who makes $100k a year having ~$70k in credit card debt? That's not "normal"- that's the person that has the Dr. Phil intervention on Oprah." The debt of our federal government is different than the 70k credit card debt of a person who makes 100k in two ways that somewhat cancel. First, the interest rate that the federal government can get is remarkably low. In fact, if we include inflation (which seems to be hard to peg right now), I would almost venture to guess that the interest rate might be negative. On the other hand, it makes me uncomfortable that people compare the federal debt to the GDP because the GDP is a sort of total income for the nation. What ought to matter is the relevant part of the income of the federal government. I haven't found good data on what this income is (anyone?) but I think it is on the order of about 3 trillion. It was about 2.5 trillion in 2006 according to Wikipedia. Anyway, if we wanted to compare the national debt to consumer debt in terms of a debt load, this is about like having a person who owes about three times his annual income on a mortgage. There are still two main differences. One the one hand, there is no home that this mortgage has enabled us to enjoy. On the other hand, the interest rates on federal debt are lower than the rates on just about any mortgage.