The National Debt has just past $40 Trillion. Before we get into the meat of this factoid, who are the Debt’s creditors? Japan, Germany, the UK, France, owners of Treasury notes, owners of securities that own Treasuries, very likely YOU are one of the Debt’s creditors. But even so, the argument that I am about to set forth doesn’t care about who are its creditors because your piece of the credit pie is vanishingly small. The plain fact is that America – and that includes you – oweS $40 Trillion to others.
The population of the United States of America is, at this moment – Augst 21, 2026 at 3:30pm ET – 342,787,505. If we spread the Debt equally onto every American, each of us would owe $116,690.37. For a family of four, $466,761.47, more than the value of a typical house in the USA, $403,200.
“But, what effect does the size of the National Debt have on me?”
The interest (!) on the Debt (at 3% interest, we’re adding $1.2 Trillion annually to the Debt, or $3500/$14,000 for each of us/our household. And we get nothing in return for this increase in taxes) adds to the size of the Debt, which increases how much the IRS would like you to contribute to them in the future in the form of taxes. The size of the Debt undermines the international value of the US Dollar, so the price of foreign goods. The Debt is a significant driver of inflation, sometimes invisible inflation.
Let’s pretend that we, or our federal government, came to our senses and decided to pay down the Debt. Not in one fell swoop, but across the next 50 (not a totally random number, as President Reagan was the first to advocate unnecessarily large deficits, aka unnecessary tax cuts) years. The annual (mortgage calculation) payment would be $1,545,492,000,000, one and a half trillion bucks plus.
if we raised the top marginal federal income tax rate to 70% (this was the top marginal federal income tax rate from JFK to Ronald Reagan, who then began dropping this tax rate to 50% then 35% then 28%. And this top tax only affected the top 1% of us), the IRS would collect an extra $200 to $700 billion, over ten years’ time. In other words, this legislative action would fail dramatically to address our issue, how to pay off the Debt in 50 years.
So, what do we have left, besides closing our eyes to a problem we don’t really want to deal with? A wealth tax on the uber wealthy, of course! How about a 5% surtax on wealth in excess of $10 million? That would do it! (Google: if we assessed a wealth tax of 9% on wealth above 10 million, how much extra tax would be collected?) (I am NOT set on a 5% surtax on wealth above $10 million. We could graduate the tax, and we could up the bottom threshold of $10 million. Whatever ways upset the poorest millionaires (!) the least and still collect additional annual tax revenues of $1,545,492,000,000 is fine with me.)
