The US national debt has crossed 100% of GDP, and the pace of accumulation is unlike anything seen before. As of March 4, 2026, total gross national debt sits at $38.86 trillion, up $2.64 trillion year over year and $10.86 trillion higher than five years ago. That works out to $7.23 billion per day, $301.39 million per hour, and $83,720.62 per second.
Highest national debt EVER recorded! All TIME high! Can you believe it? No one would believe it's possible!
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Those that believe in the “sky god” would be lead to think this is the start of the mark of the beast. A convenient “mark” will be needed to buy bread… at least that’s how the fear mongering videos I saw as as a child in church represented it.
That's why Trump, Thiel, Bezos, Muskrat, Zuckerberg, ALL of them, are doing this is so they can live like Putin. Have the entire wealth of a nation at their fingertips, and a general populace too cowed to do anything about it.
Everyone said he would bankrupt the country, heck, everyone knew it was bound to happen but that part of our brain that believes this world has bumpers assumed that someone would step in to stop the madness-- surely there must be a shadow government, illuminati or a global capital cabal to stop him from dragging the whole place down. But no one stopped him. He just went and did it and now we slide down the slope until we reach the cusp of the cliff. Then freefall.
There's a reason China is rapidly dropping American debt like the hot potato that it is.
China was once the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt. It peaked at around $1.3 trillion in 2011 and held that top spot among foreign nations until Japan overtook it in 2019.
Today, China only holds $683.5 billion. They reduced it by half and keep dropping as much as they can safely do every year.
Meanwhile, Japan, the UK, Belgium and Canada are doubling down and buying more US debt. Japan and the UK both overtook China in the amount of US debt they hold even though their overall economies are much smaller than China's.
For comparison:
Japan's GDP is ~$4.2 Trillion and they hold ~$1.2 Trillion in US debt (28.3%)
The UK's GDP is ~$3.5 Trillion and they hold ~$0.8 Trillion in US debt. (24.7%)
Belgium's GDP is ~$0.48 Trillion and they hold ~$0.66 Trillion in US debt. (72.3%)
China's GDP is ~$19.6 Trillion and they hold ~$0.7 Trillion in US debt. (3.5%)
Japan, the UK are total slaves of the US. They are gonna get fucked.
His dumbass will say come and take it now that he has the nuclear codes and he’s stepped over any previous checks and balances like congress or UN approval.
Uhm. Done? They told him that the deficit was going to explode and from what was reported he said will it happen before I'm out of office and they told him no and he said then what do I care?
This has been coming for many decades. The debt has been steadily climbing into unpayable territory for a long time. This is a milestone but it's nothing new.
Our species is going under because we owe ourselves too much of our own money.
Trump is going to add more than any 4 years ever in history. That includes his prior record of $7.8 Trillion in debt added his last presidency...and at least that one he had the excuse of a pandemic (despite a lot being from tax cuts to the rich & corporations & handouts to businesses with pandemic assistance).
All of that debt and we're about to face the largest job crisis in our history with AI...oh yea and he cut taxes to the rich and corporations again when we're clearly going to face this issue.
Edit: And just so people have context. All other presidents throughout the entire history of the US have added $27.6 Trillion in debt, and Trump during 8 years will surpass $16 Trillion, that 60% of the total of all other history. And his total is IF he doesn't massively expand the military budget or start a multi trillion dollar war in Iran, or there isn't an economic contraction where he unleashes stimulus...likely mainly to wealthy & corporations.
It's astonishing given how poorly he handled the pandemic, yet alone the chaos and stupidity of his "leadership", and still said yes this is a great idea to do again. And it was very clear he was going to cut taxes for the rich & corporations, do tariffs (which are a direct tax of consumers), support oil and gas industry and the further destruction of any chance we have to limit the impacts of global warming, and attack Iran. And the denial just continues as the rhetoric just switched to its a little pain now for a better future, even though it started as everything is going to be fantastic right away.
You think "we the people" tell the money what to do? In some idealist utopia this might be possible. I understand we learned this is how it's supposed to work in grade school. Maybe "we the people" can reclaim that heritage by watering and tending the tree of liberty, but this is not that.
Capital created the alternate reality media infrastructure to politically agitate that 55% of the stupid with an addicitive dopamine drip of righteous anger, fear and disgust.
30 years later, that stupid metastasized into an authoritarian cancer to accomplish the political goals of the billionaires.
Look into "normalcy bias"; it's a cognitive bias that causes people to underestimate the likelihood and impact of disasters, falsely believing that "things will be OK; it leads to inaction, denial, or delayed response during emergencies. Overcoming it requires active preparation, trusting intuition over social cues, and acknowledging potential risks
Cognitive dissonance is a huge one too. And it also explains why even though the science, ever since very early on, was very clear about the negative impacts of Covid and the long term damage to the heart, immune system, brain, that people easily ignored it (great article from very early on https://www.theatlantic.com./ideas/archive/2020/07/role-cognitive-dissonance-pandemic/614074/). I also believe some of the negative impacts of Covid on the brain, such as cognitive issues, loss of IQ, are worsening the situation as well.
I know that there a lot of people in this country who do not vote. I cannot understand how they could possibly be less informed than the people who actively vote against their own interests. It hurts my brain.
To pay the boatload of debt he added and the military are probably the two biggest ones. And the reason why it's so high is because they're are less taxes than there could have been because he cut them for the wealthy and corporations.
It's not just Trump's fault, but every president since Nixon has essentially added to the problem. Clinton balanced the budget for a few years at least.
I don't mean this personally, but fuck that "all presidents" bullshit.
Even at this stage people will delude themselves into thinking this was just a bad administration. No. This is off the charts bad, not since Reagan bad.
If you think of presidents as drivers of a bus, you're saying most other president drank while driving, but Trump is "I can't believe he isn't dead with that blood alcohol level" kind of drunk. So it's kind of an important distinction to make.
It's amazing how effective a distraction American political theater is. It has the added benefit that roughly half the country refuses to critique American policy when their team has the ball.
Most Americans don't have even remotely a clue about the underlying mechanics of why the US makes certain policy decisions, and both parties ultimately serve capitalist interests (just different flavors, Dems are the pro-corporate party and Republicans are the pro-oligarch, but I find both pretty distasteful).
Clinton did not actually balance the budget (the national debt still grew every year under his administration) though he still reduced the state’s borrowing rate to something that was very sustainable in the long term. Which is still miraculous.
At this point, we can’t afford to not have a universal healthcare system. The current system is bloated with administration and middle management costs(including creating profits for shareholders). We aren’t saving money with the current system at all. We can’t afford to not to change.
Do you not follow the science? It's not my take buddy. That's just CDC numbers. If you're one of those numbers, that sucks but I didn't make it up. Obesity is a disease that's a net drain on society. You can't avoid that nor can the impact be ignored.
"its not my take" - Your argument was that the reason why we wont have universal healthcare is because of obesity related spending. Which is still a ridiculous reason? Thats what I replied to.
"Obesity is a disease thats a net drain on society" - I guess? Isnt this true for all the diseases?
Your real reason is not fat people, but the highly privatised healthcare and gigantic pharmaceutical industry, health insurance industry. So money in other words, but not anyone's money. These markets are worth trillions of dollars. Guess who are the ones that are profiting off of ill people? Capitalist shareholders and capital owners. You really think that one of the richest and most developed country in the world could not afford free healthcare for its citizens? Because of obese people? Give me a break. The US can somehow spend around 900 billions for its military every year, just to put things into perspective.
There are European countries with the GDP of a single or a few US states that have free healthcare. Another thing, just check insulin prices around the world if you havent already.
The thing is US society has allowed a lot more room for their political and economic upper classes to exploit them than other countries. The populace is allowing this for the rich with not resisiting, pushing back or organizing actively.
Just to demonstrate how little political power is left in the hands of American people, the government cant even be stopped from starting and waging wars around the globe.
The US national debt has crossed 100% of GDP, and the pace of accumulation is unlike anything seen before. As of March 4, 2026, total gross national debt sits at $38.86 trillion, up $2.64 trillion year over year and $10.86 trillion higher than five years ago. That works out to $7.23 billion per day, $301.39 million per hour, and $83,720.62 per second.
The party of fiscal responsibility strikes again. It’s a good thing DOGE set the government up (to funnel any assets remaining to the wealthy who already took most of the stuff) for success!
Earlier today I was reading about how the US government is now borrowing $50,000,000,000.00 dollars a week.
Just picture that for a moment. There are entire countries who spend less than that per year. Imagine all the services we could offer and provide our citizens if we had a functional government and efficient tax system. Instead, we send it all to the oligarchs and their corporations. It's just the most mind-numbing bullshit of all time.
The GOP is finally achieving it's lifelong goal: Kill America, steal everything from the corpse, create the Confederate fiefdoms of techno-Christo-feudalism land.
So genuine question because I don’t actually know. There has to be a point where it doesn’t matter how much debt you owe. The US is the biggest consumer economy in the world, if they just didn’t pay it, who could even leverage consequences?
We won't be able to pay for weather emergencies, national emergencies(sleeper cell attacks), recessions, pandemics, etc.. If that happens people will be left to die.
Inflation will get much worse, we will see levels of homeless we have never seen before. Especially due to the Ai boom, there won't be enough jobs. The federal government has 3 million civilian jobs, they won't be able to pay them. On top of that, tons of businesses rely on the government for funds or other things to run, they'll stop. The effect of some businesses closing create a butterfly effect. A coal mine shuts down because they relied on government subsidies to help them, mine workers are laid off. Railroad workers get laid off. No railroad, 500 more businesses close. Power plants can't get their coal, now there's power outages. People can't afford the goods anyway, keep shutting down.
Public services in general will stop. Public parks not being mowed, public buildings dilapidated, no food stamps, streets not being maintained(potholes, bridges decaying). No street lights, USPS stopping service, etc. Oh that street lamp fell blocking the road? That's ok there's nobody being paid to move it. Oh no my house burnt down, but now half of our fire stations are shut down and it'll take 6 hours for help. A burglar just broke into my house and shot my wife! Oh that's ok, cops won't be there until tomorrow so just sit there and stare at her.
There will be no social security, the elder community will be homeless and starve. No Medicaid. Schools will close.
Government run protections, like the FDA and CDC will be cut to nothing. Food won't be safe, regulations won't be enforced. And guess what? It wouldn't matter anyway because farm workers aren't paid anymore and aren't farming. They don't have truck drivers or grain elevators to deliver and store the goods. We will get what food we get and hope we don't get sick. We will learn how to survive the way people did here a hundred years ago. There will be gardens in everybody's yard and we will learn how to can. A skill most have forgotten.
Future generations will be fucked. Of course this is all worst case scenario if we continue on this path for the next 10 years, however we all know we are continuing down it.
That's no shit. It's scary to think about it getting that bad, but I recommend everybody in this sub also visit the prepping/preppers ones and try to start preparing if they haven't already.
It's all shit we can live through for our future generation, just a matter of trying and learning.
None of this is at all coherent with the reality of how the US monetary system works.
The US government can always "afford" to purchase anything for sale in US dollars at current prices. There's no mechanism at all that prevents the US government meeting its nominal dollar denominated payment obligations.
What matters is how you organise your production systems so that the real resources those dollars are employed to purchase are available in a non-inflationary way.
A rising public debt to GDP ratio is of no intrinsic concern at all. It reflects a growing aggregate net savings rate that is often higher in times of weak firm and consumer confidence and low investment.
People really have so many misconceptions about all this it's crazy. Please do ask any questions if you're curious to understand more.
Id love to think those involved will get what’s coming to them.. but conventional wisdom says they most likely won’t. Bad people almost always somehow get away with it.
Remember when you zoom out every presidency had a larger deficit than the previous since 2000.
This is not just a failure of a president (of course he is the worst so far), this is capitalism failing, all it can do is print trillions as a last hurrah. USA is just speedrunning capitalism, so it’s ahead of the pack, but they will follow.
Well, from a very basic simple example, if I owe someone alot of money, but instead of paying them I kill them and take everything they own, then am I still indebted?
I'm confused: didn't this already happen years ago?
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is showing that the debt to GDP ratio was already dancing around the 100% point between 2012-2015, at the end of which it definitely exceeded it, and was sitting at around 122% as of Q4 '25.
Reddit won't let me suggest what I think should happen to MAGA's for claiming we can't afford things (it's not very severe so it's honestly pathetic they censor it) like healthcare, education, or housing. Make sure they know that THEY are going to be paying out of their own pockets.
Interesting that Elon got that guy elected presumably to cut the debt and got the most debt added by a president ever. He only managed to cut aid to the ones who needed most.
IMO the greatest defense to national debt for the common citizens, is to own valuable material goods, because even if the dollar defaults, any material items (yes even automobiles) will remain valuable and useful and can be eventually liquidated into whatever new currency will replace the dollar.
Lol@ casually racking up another $11 Trillion since Covid ended, during a time when nothing happened (except sending some old Bradleys and ammo to Ukraine)
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u/StatementBot Mar 11 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/PixeledPathogen:
The US national debt has crossed 100% of GDP, and the pace of accumulation is unlike anything seen before. As of March 4, 2026, total gross national debt sits at $38.86 trillion, up $2.64 trillion year over year and $10.86 trillion higher than five years ago. That works out to $7.23 billion per day, $301.39 million per hour, and $83,720.62 per second.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1rqeeep/us_national_debt_hits_100_of_gdp/o9rlfmu/