One of the things you'll hear a lot if people talk about the National Debt (that is, the cumulative deficit between spending and revenue run by the Federal Government), is that it's no big deal, because other countries have a proportionally higher amount of debt in relation to their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is a rough measure of total economic outpuut.

This obscures the fact that Americans have vast amounts of consumer and morgage debt compared to other nations. While our Federal Debt stands at around $8 Trillion, we collectively carry more (around $8.5T) in personal debt. This is in contrast to most other nations, where government debt is higher than personal debt.