preview

National Debt Research Paper

Better Essays

“Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt”(Herbert Hoover). This is a quotes from Herbert Hoover, 31st president of the United States. What the quote is saying is that the debt the country is building up at that time, will be dragged down to today causing problems. A national debt is when a country is borrowing more money than they are making and this has been the problem of the U.S since the founding of our country. This seems to be a problem for us, it seems that we want to spend, and spend, and spend, more money than we can make to achieve something or to satisfy our own needs. This is screwing us over in the long run, causing us to slowly mess up or country's economy. Over the growth of our country the debt has decreased …show more content…

Heading into the 1900s, the 20th century, the U.S was paying off its debt by splitting it between the states and the government, allowing a national debt less than 20% of the GDP of America. That wouldn’t last long though since we would be dragged into World War 1. The U.S had no intention of joining the war in Europe due to the debt we currently had, but after the sinking of a U.S cruise ship by the Germans that would drag us into the war. after the war was over the national debt would become 32% over the GDP. You might be asking what GDP stands for. GDP stands for Gross domestic product and it’s the monetary value of all goods and services produced by a country in a time period. So when I said that the national debt was 70 percent over the GDP, we were indebt 70 percent over the amount of money our country makes in that time period. We managed to pay some of it off in the next 10-15 years. That wouldn’t last long either though due to the Great Depression. The great depression would cause our national debt to go above 70 PERCENT of the GDP, and the person that caused this was president Hoover. Hoover thought he could spend his way out of the danger the great depression caused, but he couldn’t and caused a greater national debt problem for us. Heading into World War II, the U.S was at a 45 percent over the nation's GDP and it was still growing. How much did it grow exactly? Well in 1941 the U.S would hit a giant number of 119 percent over the GDP, which was extremely bad. Over the period of time that would follow our debt would decrease, until Reagan came into the office(Chantrill). With Reagan in the office the debt went up 50 percent over the GDP to win the Cold war. Luckily though after some time Bush and Obama would help and decrease the debt problem, it’s still high but expected to decrease in the next few

Get Access