Just How Much Is Your Share Of The National Debt?

A break down of just how much each real productive private sector worker in America owes in terms of the national debt.

Since the public sector is funded through the tax rolls, it makes no sense to include them in economic calculations that determine how much each worker owes in terms of the national debt.

For example, if the economy consisted entirely of US soldiers, taxing them to fund their own paychecks would be entirely pointless because they don’t actually produce anything of value that can be traded, sold, or consumed. Further, their salaries, and hence the taxes they pay on those salaries, are arbitrary and not set by market forces. It is impossible to know how much a police officer is worth since there is no market mechanism to determine their actual value. Police pay could be cut in half and it is entirely possible that all police job openings would still be filled. Additionally, there may be an oversupply or under supply of police positions since there is no market mechanism to determine just how many police are needed in a given area.

Granted there will be some public sector jobs that perform necessary private sector functions, and hence provide real value with real taxable earnings, but because their pay and the number of jobs is not set by market forces, it is impossible to determine their real taxable contributions to society.

Thus, any calculation of how much money needs to be coercively confiscated from the public in order to clear the debt should exclude those who are funded entirely from the tax rolls.

Economic Populist reports:

Of the 105,229,000 in the working age population, 28,255,000 were not working on Dec. 31, 2009.

The national debt is currently:

$14,266,000,000,000

Divided among the working aged population, as of 2009 figures, each worker owes roughly:

$135,571.00

Divided among the working population (ie. paying taxes) of 76,974,000, each worker owes roughly:

$185,335.00

Divided among the working population not paid from the tax rolls (16.6 million full-time equivalent public employees for state and local government in 2009, and 3.63 million federal and active duty military employees, which comes to 20.3 million total) of 56,674,000 workers, each private sector worker owes roughly:

$251,720.00

Of the 56,674,000 private sector workers who are not in the defense industry, which is funded entirely by tax dollars (about 3 million workers), each of the 53,674,000 real productive private sector workers owe roughly:

$265,790.00

A 2002 study says Public spending accounts for between 45% and 56.1% of U.S. health care. Assuming those numbers haven't changed much, we'll say 50% of healthcare spending is tax based, and so we shall deduct half the of the medical workforce from the real productive worker total.

Of the 53,674,000 productive workers who are not tax funded medical workers (14.3 million divided by 2 = 7.15 million), that leaves us with 46,524,000 productive privately funded workers.

Each of those 46,524,000 productive privately funded workers owes roughly:

$306,637.00

So in order for the national debt to be paid off, each productive private sector worker in our economy would have to cough up over a quarter million dollars each.

One more reason why this country is going to hell.

edit: main post has been updated.


oops, that figure of 16 million public sector employees is only for state and local government, it doesn't include the federal government or military.

Stand by for a correction

Federal payroll stands at 2.15 million, with 1,475,659 active military (I shall exclude reservists, since they might also have a productive private sector job).

www.washingtontimes.com...

In the UK we apparently owe £77,000 per person......as i dont condone war nor invading other countries im pretty sure i dont owe even £7 let alone £77,000!!!

I owe them nothing.

But I always wondered if they eliminate the debt somehow does this mean they have to pay us a percentage of profits, can't work just one way right? Oh I forgot we are in the USA yup it's a one way street.

Well, that's the plan in the first place isn't it? To make all us "sheep" feel like we owe the system, that's what keeps us working at our meaningless jobs and focused on our myopic trivialities on a daily basis. I personally am in quite a bit of debt (albeit not as much as the OP is talking about). I find it confounding to think that I'll be paying for the economic bailout for the rest of my life through taxes yet my debtors still charge me about 30% interest on what I do owe. I'm no mathematician but if I'm paying 30% on what you loaned me....how again did you get so broke?

reply to post by mnemeth1


Probably posted here before but I'll post it again.

US National Debt Clock

Current debt at time of writing; $14,266,326,***,***
Debt per citizen; $45,859
Debt per tax payer; $128,401

So the "50,224,000 productive privately funded" American workers owe $284,048.00 approximately.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of 2009, the median annual salary for a full-time worker in the United States was $36,587. After federal taxes and not taking into account SS, state and local taxes, the take home is $25,611 it will take the these median American workers 11.1 years to pay the national debt off. Providing they aren't selfish and do something like keep a roof over their family's head, feed the family, cloth them, etc. Oh yes that assumes that the debt doesn't increase.

Frankly if the US was a company we would already be in bankruptcy court and on a mandated budget. Personally I see no way out of this situation other than the country declaring bankruptcy.

My share of the national debt is nothing.

I didn't spend any of it and I didn't vote for anyone who did.

Just because I was born in a certain geographic region, doesn't mean I owe anyone anything. The United States is united under one system of violence. We are united in the sense that prisoners in a cell block are united.

My hands are clean of this mess.

Accepting the governments assessment of what you owe? Hundreds of thousands, your home your freedoms, your peace of mind, etc,.

Knowing you owe nothing, and sleep well at night having this knowledge. Priceless.

Peace, NRE.

reply to post by mnemeth1


I'm sorry, we do not owe a penny. Oh wait, no i'm not sorry. We do not owe anything because we did not spend the money here there everywhere in the first place. THEY DID. So, how can we owe something we had no control over because our hands were tied? Tell me, really. WE OWE. NO. They can go and pay it back. WE OWE, get real.