eli5: Why is the US commonly called the “wealthiest country” if we have 30T in debt?

Question

eli5: Why is the US commonly called the “wealthiest country” if we have 30T in debt?

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Answer 1

I’ll make this one a bit longer since auto moderator is kind of rubbish and only seems to care about sentences.

A good chunk of the debt is owned by other Americans. So while it’s debt on the government books, it’s an asset on someone else’s ledger.

Further, government debt is not like debt that you or I might incur. They have both powers and responsibilities that an ordinary citizen never would. This is not to argue that government debt is fine and unlimited borrowing should not cause any worry. But that’s a whole other discussion.

Finally, if one adds up the value of everything in the USA, land, parks, cities, it dwarfs the debt figure. So it’s kind of like worrying about a home equity loan of a few thousand bucks when the house is worth millions. Yes, it could cause problems, but it’s not run for the hills trouble.