What's the Debt Ceiling and the National Debt?

Civics 101

NHPR

Education, History, Supreme Court, American History, Elections, Democracy, Society & Culture, Government, Civics, Politics, Social Studies

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What's the deal with the debt ceiling, anyway?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Nick, I'm going to put you on the spot.
0:03.0	All right.
0:04.0	Okay.
0:05.0	Do you think that you can guess our national debt to the nearest trillion dollar amount?
0:11.2	When I was a child, I remember being seven trillion dollars.
0:15.8	Okay.
0:16.8	It's around thirty now.
0:18.8	Wow.
0:19.8	I mean, can you even gather with thirty trillion dollars?
0:22.9	Looks like it's comically large.
0:28.3	One of my father's favorite exercises was this.
0:30.6	Do you know the thing about the difference between a million seconds and a billion seconds
0:33.2	and a trillion seconds?
0:34.2	Is it a trick question?
0:35.2	No, no, no.
0:36.2	A million seconds was last week.
0:38.1	It was 11 days ago.
0:39.6	Oh, yeah.
0:40.6	A billion seconds is when you were born Hannah, 31 years ago as a billion seconds.
0:45.7	A trillion seconds is over 31,000 years ago.
0:50.4	Exponence, man.
0:52.1	Thirty trillion is a huge number, right?
	...

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