very cool - U.S. National Debt Clock (real time)
 

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

It current says:

"The Outstanding Public Debt as of 11 Nov 2002:

$6,274,026,870,617

The estimated population of the United States is 288,835,512
so each citizen's share of this debt is $21,721.80.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$1,140 million per day since September 28, 2001!"

Crazy, huh?

Check out the FAQ here:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html
It has some cool graphs like this one:

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/inflation.gif

Holy mutha fucka. Thats INSANE !

Damn... we each owe 2 cents more than when you first made this post, despite the 48 births that have happened:

The estimated population of the United States is 288,835,560
so each citizen's share of this debt is $21,721.82.

aslong as you they are owed money than they'll never be broke

Yeah, keep refreshing the page, and you'll see how crazy the increase rate is... mind blowing.

On the FAQ page, it states:

"The National Debt on January 1st 1791 was just $75 million dollars. Today, it rises by that amount every dozen hours or so."

If we stopped supporting some of these fucked up 3rd world countries, and giving help to all the imigrants, we wouldnt be in such debt......Yet even with all this debt, the average us citizen lives a much better life then most other countries.

And with GB at the helm you will find it gets worse.

Except for him and his friends.

:thumbsup

Its all just digital money anyway. Debt has its value and place in economics. Without debt the capital markets wouldn't function and prosper. Growth and development rely on debt financing.

Whats another 20K of debt, get in line.

You can thank LendingTree.com and DiTech.com :-)

Also I just paid my credit card bill and it did not deduct it is the stats good?

so if we all pitched in $22K to a fund, do you think they'd use it on the debt, or on "homeland defense" or other dubya nonsense?

And Bush is cutting taxes...

Insane.

They'd just send it to the countries that hate us. So why bother?

if all 10k GFY members chipped in 22k, we could collect 220 Mio. bucks.

nothing in this world is free. In return for "aid" they open their economies to US investment. Aid is an investment tool, much like the debt the countries invariably accrue.

Me thinks you don't understand what the national debt is, my friend...

I second that.

I can't see how much more the US debt will skyrocket once Bush goes after Iraq... Sure, the economy will get a boost, from borrowed/non-existant money...

Cheers,
Matt

Oh.. and poor babies that just get born have an instant $21k debt to pay!

Cheers,
Matt

:2 cents: Can I put that on my Visa card?:glugglug

Even if the USA ever did get its debt down to good levels as soon as that happend the govt would go "OH sweet, were not in debt for 7 trillion dollars anymore, lets retify that problem by blowing 100's of billions on more useless fucking missions to Mars and lots of useless telescopes to see into places we'll never go. And while some of our countrymen can't afford food or are hopeless that don't matter, lets just send up as many billion dollar spacecraft into space as we can.

The thing that really pisses me off is that we're CONSTANTLY giving away MILLIONS of dollars and forgiving other countries of the money that they owe us, what the fuck is up with that ?? Why don't we wisen up like Japan and learn to invest our money back into our country rather than giving it away.

Many countries have debt.

I wouldn't say the space program is useless. Eventually that shit is going to save our civilization regardless if it is in your lifetime or not. If you knew the number of near hit asteroids that have been within the radius of the moon's orbit in the past 10 years you would shit your pants. Especially the ones that come from the direction of the Sun which cannot be seen until after they missed, and astronomers calculate their past orbit and find they just missed Earth.

ya was gonna comment on that.

weird how rabid republicans view the SPACE program as taking away from domestic spending but not military spending (or star wars missile shields lol)

in 10 yrs we hope 2 have a mirrored telescope capable of spotting planets small enuf to be habitable in other solar systems and galaxies. we cant get there yet but theyre coming closer and closer to renewable energy sources like dark matter, fission, anti-grav, whatever so the two may coincide. we may not see a manned mission outside this galaxy for 30 years or more but at some point ull be glad they give those physicists 100 million 2 build a telescope.

:thumbsup

Very good points and very true.