How has the National Debt grown over time?
The National Debt on January 1st 1791 was just $75 million dollars. Today, it rises by that amount every hour or so. The following graph shows how the National Debt has grown year by year since 1940 in actual dollar amounts, uncorrected for inflation: This data was gathered from the U.S. Treasury department’s web site. From time to time, I’ve gotten e-mail saying that the above graph is flawed — it’s just showing normal inflation. Well, I took the Debt numbers from the above graph and converted them all to 2000 dollars. Picking a different year would not have changed the shape of the graph below, just its height: As you can see, except for a rise at the end of World War II, the Debt remained remarkably constant for nearly forty years when inflationary forces are taken into account. After 1983 however, with the notable exception of the Fiscal Years ending in September of 2000 and 2001, the trend has been upward even when inflation is taken into account.
