Federal Debt Held by the Public
$36,482,113,964,221
Up $0 since you opened this page.
Federal debt outstanding, in dollars. Source: US Treasury, Daily Statement of the Public Debt. Updated end of each business day, New York time.
The Center for Intergenerational Settlement is a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to the orderly resolution of the demographic balance sheet.
The Ledger — Current Reading
Boomer Share of US Household Wealth
51.4%
Population share, for reference: 20.3%.
Net worth of US households headed by persons born 1946–1964, as a share of total US household net worth. Source: Federal Reserve, Distributional Financial Accounts. Updated quarterly.
Median Home Price to Median Household Income
7.4
1985 reading: 3.1.
Ratio of median existing-home sale price to median annual household income. Source: National Association of Realtors and US Census Bureau Current Population Survey. Updated monthly.
Purchasing Power of a 1971 Dollar
$0.156
1971 was the year the dollar’s convertibility to gold was suspended.
Real value of one US dollar held since August 15, 1971, calculated against CPI-U All Items. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Updated on the BLS CPI release schedule.
AI Hyperscaler Capex, Calendar Year to Date
$271 billion
2023 full-year reading: $148 billion. 2026 guided: $650 billion.
Cumulative capital expenditure, calendar-year-to-date, by Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle. Source: company quarterly filings, SEC EDGAR. Updated within five business days of each earnings release.
Estimated Social Security and Medicare Unfunded Liability
$76.0 trillion
This is the figure the working population is to make up at the time of payment.
Combined present value of unfunded obligations of the OASDI and HI/SMI trust funds, 75-year horizon. Source: Social Security Administration and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Trustees Reports. Updated annually each spring.
Notes on the Reading
On the debt.
The figure is not a war debt. It is a maintenance bill, paid in deferred dollars, for asset prices the central bank has refused to permit to fall. The founding act of the policy — the asymmetric reaction function, the “put” — is documented in Subject File 01.
On the wealth share.
Twenty percent of the population; half of the wealth. The instruments through which the share was assembled — the central-bank put, the index oligopoly, the asset-price bezzle — are documented across the Center’s working dossiers. The accumulation has no parallel in the experience of the cohorts on either side of it.
On the housing ratio.
A ratio of 3.1 is a country in which a working family can buy a house. A ratio of 7.4 is a country in which it inherits one or it does not. The intervening four decades did not produce a productivity miracle in the construction industry. They produced a redistribution.
On the dollar.
Fifteen and a half cents. Held, for the most part, by the cohort that did not own the inflation-protected assets. The conversion from monetary discipline to monetary accommodation was performed in installments — rate cut after rate cut, facility after facility — none announced as policy at the time. The early installments are documented in Subject File 01.
On the AI capex.
Capital is being committed at a pace last observed in the late-1990s railroad-equivalent — except that the railroad, once built, ran for a century. The graphics processor, by the Center’s analysis, depreciates by approximately fifty percent in the first year. The principal individual beneficiary of the present cycle is documented in Subject File 03.
On the entitlement gap.
The promises were made by the cohort to itself. The funding was deferred to the cohort that has not yet voted. The Center submits that the arithmetic of this single line is the arithmetic of the proposal.