Why is the World in debt, how do we pay it off, and why should we care?
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The world is in debt to itself. That is, parts of the world are in debt to other parts. And that debt is valuable for both sides.
For example, a government is in debt to people who have bought government bonds. The bond-holders benefit because they give the government some X dollars now, but get X + Y dollars later, with interest. The government benefits because it can use the money it raised from selling the bonds today to invest in developing the country, which will hopefully result in more economic growth and increase tax incomes to pay off the X + Y dollars that it needs to pay the bond-holders back in a 5/10/20 years. As long as this relationship holds (the government can invest the money and successfully generate more income each year than they need to pay out for the borrowed money, and the bond-holders get their payments when they are expected), then there’s no problem with the debt at all.
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