Macroeconomics

16-1

The Size of the Government Debt

Let’s begin by putting the government debt in perspective. In 2008, the debt of

the U.S. federal government was $5.8 trillion. If we divide this number by 

305 million, the number of people in the United States, we find that each per-

son’s share of the government debt was about $19,000. Obviously, this is not a triv-

ial number—few people sneeze at $19,000. Yet if we compare this debt to the

roughly $1.5 million a typical person will earn over his or her working life, the gov-

ernment debt does not look like the catastrophe it is sometimes made out to be.

One way to judge the size of a government’s debt is to compare it to the

amount of debt other countries have accumulated. Table 16-1 shows the