The Sorry Tale of America’s Out-of-control Spending

Debt Be Not Proud: The Sorry Tale of America’s Out-of-control Spending
"At the end of fiscal 2008, which came on September 30 of last year, the American national debt stood at $9.6 trillion.
That sum is, perhaps, quite beyond the imagining of most people.
It is, after all, 250 million times the average per capita income.
Even the total fortunes of the entire Forbes 400 list add up to less than 15 percent of it.
To use a journalistic measure that dates back to the late 18th century—when the British national debt had become a major political issue in that country—if you laid 9.6 trillion silver dollars end to end, they would reach to the sun and back, with enough left over to wrap around the Earth more than 1,700 times."