I bet they got their ideas from the government! Seriously, does anyone ever think the debt will be paid off? What does that number even mean? If an individual tried to borrow so much money, eventually the banks will cut him off since obviously he only has a lifetime to pay it off. With the government, clearly the debt can be rolled forward onto future generations, but still, there is never hope of ever paying it off. If the government ever has a trillion left over after collecting taxes and paying for services, will they use it to pay off the debt? No way... people will say either spend more in social services or collect less taxes. If you get to the point of inflation actually doing most of the paying, then the whole system is out of control already anyway since the inflation would hit so hard in every area. Since there is never any real effort to pay off a real debt, what does this debt actually mean? The idea that even interest rates can be arbitrarily set is a huge joke as well. It should be based on market forces. If banks actually had any skin in the game, they wouldn't dare lend out nearly as much, they would charge much more interest, and would require a much bigger down payment for houses, as was the case over 50 years ago. These 2-3% interest rates are a joke if you consider it in the context of market forces. I would never lend someone $100,000 and expect to only receive a few hundred dollars a month for my huge risk. So if a golden rule in life is to lead by example, then you have to wonder how an individual should think about debt when the government is playing a very dangerous game. People borrow money at low interest rates to either throw it into the stock market, or into the real estate market because they think both will only ever go up. You would think the cost of borrowing money wouldn't be so cheap, and you would think that there should be fear in most regular people that RE and stocks are risky. But these days, everyone is on the gravy train. Can we blame them given what we see happening higher up? When does the gravy train crash?