How big is the American national debt?
The short answer is approximately $18 trillion.
But most people have no idea what a trillion is. In most English-speaking countries (usage varies around thew world!), a trillion is 1,000 billion and a billion is 1,000 million, so a trillion is 1,000,000,000,000. Therefore $18 trillion is a LARGE number.
But it still means little unless one has some context. You’ll find some useful ways of looking at the figure here.
As Americans go to the polls today in the mid term Congressional elections, I wonder how many candidates have said anything meaningful about the US national debt.