eli5: Why is the US commonly called the “wealthiest country” if we have 30T in debt?
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The “wealth” of a country can be measured in many ways. The US has unmatched resources. Plentiful forests. Oil, gas, coal, uranium, anything we need for energy production. Enormous swaths of extremely productive farmland. Iron ore, gold, copper for anything we need to build. A superhighway of a river going right down the middle of the country. Plentiful deepwater ports for trade. And vast oceans on both sides which make it easy to defend against any conventional invasion.
After WWII we also basically set up the entire world order to our benefit. The deal was, settle all your debts and trade in US dollars, and in turn we’ll use our Navy to keep the peace and trade routes open. This means, among many other things, we borrow our “debts” in USD, which we also issue. There’s literally no way would ever need to not pay – we just “create” the dollars and give them to you. And because USD is the currency that every country uses for international trade, its always worth something.
Tl;dr – For the US the debt is fake, the resources are huge, the “wealth” is whatever we choose it to be
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