Five Fun Facts About the $14 Trillion National Debt

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on March 24, 2011, Printed on March 25, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150371/

Our public debt – now at around $14 trillion dollars ($14,233,559,283,692.40 as of this writing, to be precise) – has been in the news lately, but how we accrued it, who holds it and whether it represents a problem are not well understood.

In one sense, for better or worse, our growing public debt has put trillions into the pockets of the American people. There's an economic principle known as “Wagner’s law,” which holds that as a country gets wealthier, its tax burden tends to increase.