Here’s some cheery news. According to this report, the U.S. debt just topped $8.19 trillion, somewhat over the current U.S. debt ceiling. Technically, that means the U.S. is in default, at leat until it raises its own debt ceiling.
To put this whopper of a number in perspective, that $8.19 trillion works out to just over $27,480 for each citizen of the U.S.A. Or, if you had a stack of 8.19 trillion, 1-cm thick CD jewel cases, they would stretch 81.9 million km (51.2 million miles) into space — about halfway to the sun! Incredible.
51.2 million miles sounds about right. When the planets are aligned just right, you could go all the way to Mars on that.
And we could have a use for all those jewel cases discarded by people who rip their CDs.