Guest Article: Who We Owe

CHART: WHO DOES THE U.S. GOV’T OWE $17 TRILLION TO?
written by: National Public Radio

"The U.S. government owes a lot of money.

A lot.

In fact, U.S. debt today stands at about $17 trillion.

Obviously, that’s a little difficult to understand with just words.

So here to help you visualize the debt situation in the U.S. — and help you understand where money is owed — is a helpful chart from National Public Radio:

Here are some key takeaways [as presented by Business Insider]:

• We owe most of the money to ourselves.
• We owe a big chunk of the money — about $6 trillion — to the Federal government. So if there ever were a default (hopefully there won’t be) the government would also be stiffing itself.
• We owe about $5 trillion to other countries, including China. The total debt to China is only $1.3 trillion. So we’re not in hock to China as much as some people think we are.

Yes, it’s a boatload of debt. But the experience of Japan, the U.S. after World War 2, and other countries, suggests that it’s a manageable amount, as long as we eventually get our long-term entitlement spending under control."