The Debt Clock

For my second blog post, I read an article from the Star Tribune titled Sharpening Their Economic Plans, by Peter Nicholas and Bob Drogin. This article was about how Obama and McCain would deal with the economic struggles that are facing the nation right now, and what their plan for the future is. However, this is not what intrigued me about the piece. The reason I started to read this particular article was the picture at the top, which was of the National Debt Clock. The National Debt Clock is an ongoing clock that keeps track of the nations debt. In the picture it says that we are at $9,536,317,678,235.00, but by now it is inevitably much higher. I have looked at this clock before online for school projects, and I am always very fascinated as to why we would be spending so much money on things we don’t need to survive, like the war, then not having enough for the things we do need, like healthcare. I was also curious as to why at the bottom of the clock they have a smaller number that says “your families share”, which at the time of the picture was $80,913.00. This number is also constantly growing. I was confused about this because I know that not every family has debt, and some families, like celebrities, are far from it. However, when I thought about it, this number might represent more than just debt that someone owes. It might represent what we will eventually loose in healthcare, or even something small like work on our roads. This upsets me because I know that when I am older the debt will be even larger and I will be loosing less, unless someone does something about it. I know that I know very little about the economy, and politics in general for that matter, but I do understand that the debt clock is not to be taken lightly.