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What $13 trillion could buy

In case you missed the news, the U.S. federal debt crossed the $13-trillion mark last week.

Because the human mind has trouble comprehending a number that large, the folks at SmartMoney ran a few calculations and have put $13 trillion into terms easier to understand:

• With $13 trillion, Americans could buy nine 32-gigabyte iPhones (the 3GS model) for every human being on the planet;
• For $13 trillion, 68 million students could be sent to Yale University (four years of room and board at $190,000);
• $13 trillion could buy every person in the U.S. one item off of McDonald's dollar menu every day for the next 115 years;
• $13 trillion could buy round-the-clock on-call medical care for the entire population of the U.S. — for 30 years;
• For $13 trillion, everyone in the U.S. could spend the next 60 years hanging out everyday at Disneyland (based on the cost of Disney Premiere Passport ticket).

Of course, for $13 trillion we could also pay off the national debt. If we paid down $1 million per day (assuming interest was not accruing), we could have the debt completely wiped out in just 36,000 years!

In its just-released "Annual Report on the Public Debt" (PDF), the Treasury Department estimates the debt will grow to $19.6 trillion by 2015. If you're not among the faint of heart, check out the U.S. debt clock here.

Update: Want to help reduce the debt? Check out this official U.S. government page.

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