Americans have different political ideologies, beliefs, and values. What would the typical American conservative say about a government that spends so much more than it takes in?
To make the debt go down governments need to spend less (budgetary expenditures) than they take in (tax). Imagine you were a politician who wanted to eliminate our debt and advocated spending less (cutting government programs) and taxing more (increasing how much citizens pay the government in taxes). How would your economic goal impact your reelection chances?
Why does American public debt keep rising?
At the same time as the U.S. debt goes up, what is going down?
Write the entire U.S. public debt number out (in other words, turn the trillions into zeroes):
In the entire word there are 7 billion people; 6500 spoken languages, and about 400 billion birds. Name anything in the world that there are more than 22 trillion of:
How does U.S. public debt compare to the rest of the world?*
Who owns the U.S. public debt?*
What role does the U.S. Congress have in the US debt?
What role does the POTUS have in the US debt?
President Trump signed the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, reducing U.S. tax revenue. 83 percent of the tax breaks from this bill go to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. How will these huge tax cuts impact the U.S. debt?
Based on your knowledge of American politics, why would the President give such a large tax cut during a time of dramatically increasing American debt?
How old will you be in 2050?
If you were to look at the overall trend of this chart, predict what the chart will look like in 2050.*
