US Federal Debt: A Historical Perspective

The following graph tells you everything you need to know about the current deft level. All that hysteria about the world coming to the end because of "unsustainable debt" is just so much hot air. Nations have been debts they fall into when great crises occur: the Civil War, WW1, WWI, the Great Depression, the 1970s post Vietnam malaise, the Ronald Reagan "deficits don't matter, tax cuts are magical and will cure them" philosophy of the 1980s and George Bush 2000s...

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The latest dip into debt is because the Great Recession is a big hole to fall into. Here's a graph to let you compare the current recession to all those post WWII:

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Don't listen to the hysteria on the right. They want to use this as an opportunity to cut entitlement programs. They want to "shrink government" so they can give more tax cuts to their favourite people, the ultra-rich. With the Reagan and Bush tax cuts, the ultra-rich have become wildly rich. From a post by Brad Delong:

we do need more progressive income redistribution--remember that we are in a country where a generation ago the top 0.01% of households took 1% of total income, and now they take 6%.