A video looking at way you can't simply print money to pay off debt. And what has happened when countries have tried to! And for that matter why a country having debt isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only reason the US has the most debt is because the US dollar is considered the most trust-worthy currency and other countries see the US as a safe place to put their money. It would be worse it countries started buying debt of other countries and stopped putting into the United States. The debt may be a lot but it's actually not something that's an issue. The US will never 'pay-off' its debt because that's not how it works. National debt only becomes an issue if GDP isn't growing, which it is. A more accurate way to see when the debt is an issue is the debt-GDP ration. In which the US is fine in that respect. Whereas Greece and Japan have debt-GDP ratios of over 150%, which is bad. Also, keep in mind that the US owns debt of many other countries. In fact, for every $1 of US debt, the US holds $0.89 of foreign debt. Note: if you're having trouble understanding the whole 'long-scale' and 'short-scale' talk then please read this Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales MUSIC: Hammock Fight - Kevin MacLeod - (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100213 IMAGES: White House: Matt Wade - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UpstateNYer Assortment of Money - epSos.de Flickr users: Nick Ares(http://www.flickr.com/photos/aresauburnphotos/) Taki Steve (http://www.flickr.com/photos/13519089@N03/) Kevinzim (http://www.flickr.com/photos/86624586@N00/) (I wrongly credited ZeroOne in the video for the image of the Zimbabwean dollars, it's actually from Wikimedia Commons, and in the public domain) Wikipedia Articles: Hyperinflation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe Zimbabwean Dollar - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar Hungarian Pengo - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_pengo Names of large numbers - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers Helpful YouTube videos: 'Who much money is there in the world' by Vsauce - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2tKg3E53DM 'Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit' by John Green of the Vlogbrother - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugDU2qNcyg Clip art from http://www.clker.com/ FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: www.twitter.com/wonderwhy7439

• published: 31 Aug 2013
• views: 21