According to ChatGPT, when I was 20 years old there were 13 billionaires and 1.1 million millionaire households in the USA. That was 1980. Today, there are over 700 billionaires and 11.6 million millionaire households in the United States. That is 54 times the number of billionaires and 10.5 times the number of millionaire households since 1980. The population grew by only 50%.

On first glance people may think that reflects a growing wealth of our economy. They would be wrong.

In 1980, our national debt was $866 billion; today it is $31.5 trillion. The size of our national debt has increased by 36 times. The debt per taxpayer in 1980 was $10,780; today the debt per taxpayer is $247,000.

Further analysis shows that the debt to GDP ratio in 1980 was 34%. Today, the federal debt to GDP ratio is 120%.

It’s not wealth that has grown since 1980, it’s debt. Worse, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich. The ultra-rich got the most valuable assets and the taxpayers got the bill.

From here it gets worse.

In addition to the massive debt run up by the federal government we also face state and local debts now estimated at $3.5 trillion. Add to all this $8.3 trillion negative balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, which was brought on by quantitative easing, an unprecedented manipulation of the economy which is in effect an “off balance sheet” debt against our economy.

Currently, the Fed is working to reduce that debt through a process called qualitative tightening. The goal is to reduce the amount by $2 trillion from its highs to around $7.5 trillion in the next two years.

Added that all together you have effectively a $42 trillion debt that the U.S. economy is carrying, and it’s continuing to grow. From here it still gets even worse. The current unfunded government employee pension liabilities we face across America are an estimated $1.4 trillion.

Government employees don’t participate in Social Security; they have their own system which is more generous than Social Security by most accounts. This government employee retirement system has been chronically underfunded.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare and Social Security are both facing insolvency in the very near future. Currently, it is projected that in 2033 the Social Security benefits will be cut by 20%. It is even worse for Medicare; current projections indicate the Medicare trust will reach critical low levels requiring statutory reductions in benefits in just five years — 2028.

Generations yet to be born will bear the costs of our indebted economy.

Do you have a point you’d like to make or an issue you feel strongly about? Submit a letter to the editor or a guest column.