Orange County Register

We love numbers, and with baseball season winding down we turn today away from batting averages to numbers that arguably are even more important - like the national debt.

A reader brought to our attention this delightful (well, delightful in the Halloween sense of the word) web site that gives you just about every significant calculation you need to stay depressed.

It’s the U.S. National Debt Clock. Find it here.

At this moment (your results will vary since the thing is updated instantly) the national debt is $11,923,925,377,674, give or take a dollar.

“What’s that mean?” you might ask.

Well, the clock helps you understand. The debt per citizen is $38,739. Ouch.

If you think that’s something, the debt per taxpayer is $109,931. OUCH.

What we found most intriguing is that, according to the clock, the gross domestic product is something less than the debt. OUCH, for sure. And, of course, it follows that the GDP per citizen and per worker also are less than the corresponding debts for the citizen and taxpayer.

What’s all this mean? We’re not entirely sure, but it seems a bit troubling that the total national assets and assets per citizen fall substantially short of total unfunded liabilities and liabilities per citizen. Did we say, OUCH!?

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