According the US debt clock, the US National debt is about $ 13 trillion. When you read certain popular newspapers you can be scared by this huge amount of money. I don’t know why (actually I do), but certain journalists or TV shows like to scare the American people. They say that America is almost bankrupt; they claim that the debt per American citizen is more than $42.000. But they forget to say that the United States of America produces for more than 14 trillion dollar every year, that the GDP per worker is more than $100.000.
And you know what; all these numbers don’t mean anything. Because each time you bring a new figure you have people to bring other ones and this game never ends.
Actually the amount of money America borrowed is not that important. It sounds weird but the fact is that people are more than happy to lend money to the most powerful nation of the world. China is still very happy to lend money to the USA. The American bonds are the least risky, so banks, big companies, countries and individuals are glad that America needs money. Clearly, finding money is not an issue for the USA. People actually need the American bonds to make not risky and guaranteed investments (and even more in a crisis situation like today).
So the main question is not how much the USA borrow but what they do with this money. The biggest issue is to know where the money goes. Are the investments efficient or just a waste of money? If the US government borrow money to make new infrastructures, help industry, support agriculture, create innovation, these interventions can be useful for the economy. It is a basic (Keynesian) Economic Policy that can improve the current economic situation. But if the money is wasted in non profitable projects, the USA could suffer from these bad investments. Borrowed and well invested money can help to create jobs for individuals and wealth for the American nation. During the New Deal, F.D.R. implemented such economic policies and managed to save America from the Great Depression.
The American debt started to be a big concern in America after the current administration wanted to implement the new Health Care program. The main problem was the tremendous price of the program and people worried about how the US will pay. Health care reform will cost about $1 trillion over the next 10 years[1]. Just to compare the total cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is about $1 trillion since 2001. I do not judge the legitimacy or the necessity of these wars but I personally think that the Health Care reform is a great investment in the best asset of the Unites States: The American People.
We should be more focus on what the USA do with the money they borrow that how much debts they issue.
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