A look at the debt

The federal debt has reached its legal limit in the United States. There are fears of payment defaults, and that credit ranking agencies may retrograde America’s debt ranking causing increased interest fees. The French president is attempting to push a “Golden Rule” legislation into the Constitution, which would impose deficit limits. The debt question has inspired numerous visualizations.

The national debt clock is always counting on both the Internet and in Times Square, in case you want to get an idea of its magnitude.

The most impressive visualization is without a doubt this one, which represents the debt physically. After being walked through a few previous visualizations (one million dollars, one trillion dollars, etc.), we come to the realization that if we stacked all the United States’ unfunded liabilities ($114.5 trillion), it would become the tallest skyscraper in New York if it was constructed out of 100 dollar bills.

In a visualization by the New York Times, the accumulation of debt is constructed in relation to time. The most significant portion of the debt was incurred by George W. Bush, along side many laws that created tax reductions. Another graph shows the impact the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had on the deficit over time.

The White House did not hesitate to use the same number and presentation, although they changed the color scheme. History makes evident that there is more to the story than Barack Obama just inheriting the debt of his predecessor. Anthony Hamelle highlights that the graph only shows the leaders of the policies implemented, and does not mention the opportunities Obama could have taken to curb the debt. Clearly the data does not say everything.

In France’s newspaper LeMonde, they also presented a similar idea of how to display the country’s debt:

Debt and deficit in relation to France's GDP. Pink: Political Left. Blue: Political Right.

So how do you see the debt?