America’s $40T debt could stretch to the moon and back 6 times — and your own share is eye-watering
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America’s colossal $40 trillion debt is so out-of-this world, it’s hard to understand just how massive it is. So try this comparison.
If you stacked 40 trillion $1 bills, it would reach the moon and back nearly six times.
Forty trillion dollars is worth more than all of the gold ever mined in human history.
It’s about the size of the economies of China, Germany, Japan, the UK, India and France — combined.
That’s more than six-figures for every man, woman, child and baby in America.
It would take the average American worker, earning a salary of $69,770, more than 573 million years to make that much money.
If America’s entire active labor force of 168 million each gave every dollar they earned to repay the US debt, it would take 41 months to balance the books.
The US government debt has ballooned since the Great Recession hit in 2008 — quadrupling from $10 trillion when President Barack Obama was elected, to $40.05 trillion in 2026.
Every president since Ronald Reagan — and his successful efforts to bankrupt the Soviet Union through deficit spending — has ballooned the debt. It hit $1 trillion for the first time early in his administration — and then ballooned to $2.7 trillion, a 189% rise.
Here’s how much the debt went up under each president.
Currently, US debt stands at 123.5% of GDP, higher than in 1945 when the debt-to-GDP ratio swelled to 116% at the end of the Second World War.
Franklin D Roosevelt oversaw the greatest addition to the US debt in percentage terms of any US President, as his New Deal and war spending swelled the deficit by 70 percentage points.
US National Debt as a percentage of GDP dropped after World War II, falling to a low of 31% in 1980 at the start of President Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
In comparison to other countries, the $40.05 trillion figure is truly monumental. It’s larger than the combined GDP of every country in the world except for the US and China
“Forty trillion dollars of debt doesn’t exist solely on the government’s ledgers; it is felt throughout the economy and finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in a statement.
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“The more we borrow, the more we exacerbate inflation, squeeze out other priorities in the budget, and leave ourselves vulnerable to emergencies at home and turmoil abroad,” she added, following the release of the Treasury data.