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13 insane numbers to explain the national debt
Eye-opening stats about what you could do with 37 trillion…hours, dollars, burgers, and more.
| Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department quietly confirmed that the federal government surpassed $37 trillion in national debt — five years ahead of schedule (the Congressional Budget Office previously predicted we wouldn’t reach that number until 2030). At Convention of States, we’re constantly sounding the alarm about the nation’s crushing debt. Of course, $37 trillion is pretty much impossible to wrap one’s mind around. To help break it down into more tangible(?) terms, here are several eye-opening statistics about what you could do with 37 trillion…hours, dollars, burgers, and more. 1. Feeling hungry? The entire restaurant industry made about $1 trillion for the first time ever in 2023. That means if those rates held up and every restaurant in America agreed to share all their profits with the federal government and we stopped adding to the national debt, we could pay it off by 2062! 2. Amazingly, the industry made that money across “only” 700,000 restaurants. It may feel like we have restaurants on every street corner in America, but you would have to multiply that number by 52,857,142 to get 37 trillion. 3. McDonald’s sold a whopping 6.5 billion burgers in 2021. That means it would take roughly 5,692 years’ worth of McDonald’s entire global output to reach 37 trillion burgers. 4. It would take a bit longer at Chick-fil-A — 70,208 years’ worth of Chick-fil-A’s entire global output to reach 37 trillion chicken sandwiches. 5. At that point, you may just want to buy a few restaurants for yourself. With $37 trillion, you could purchase McDonalds, Starbucks, Chipotle, Burger King, Tim Hortons, Popeyes, Firehouse Subs, Wendy’s, Cracker Barrel, Shake Shake, Texas Roadhouse, Cheesecake Factory, Dutch Bros, Wingstop, Chili's Grill & Bar, Maggiano’s Little Italy, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell at market cap value roughly 74 times over (and still have leftover change). 6. Running all of those businesses will be exhausting. If at the end of the day you need a break, you could watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy about three trillion times in 37 trillion hours. 7. If you’re hoping for something a bit longer, the world’s longest movie, Logistics, lasts 857 hours. With 37 trillion hours, you could watch Logistics 43,173,862,310 times. Enjoy! 8. Shifting gears, if you wanted to cover the 2024 interest on the federal debt, you would have to sell the Walt Disney Company more than four times over. Just to cover the interest! 9. After 33 movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the highest-grossing film franchise in history, brought in a pretty $30 billion. At that rate, you would need about 935 more equally profitable Marvel movies to cover last year’s interest on the federal debt. 10. Fine, forget trying to pay off the debt. What else could you buy for that kind of money? Quite a lot, it turns out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/g9xYm4Zuvk0 Remember, that entire list doesn’t even cover one trillion. And you have 37. 11. Alternatively, if you wanted to use your wealth to take over the country, you could buy Congress for the next 10,741 years, hire 56.8 million U.S. Army privates, and still have $35 trillion left over in your emergency fund. 12. Or maybe you crave a lifetime — a very, very long lifetime — of endless shopping sprees. With $37 trillion burning a hole in your back pocket, you could spend $1 million a day for more than 100,000 years. You better hope they have luxury shopping malls in heaven! 13. Lastly, maybe you’re an avid reader and you want to know how many times you’d have to read this article to read 37 trillion words. The answer: about 51,246,537,396 times. These numbers simply boggle the mind. If that’s how deeply indebted our government is, America is in serious financial straits. At this point, either we must watch passively as debt drags our ship to the bottom of the ocean, or we must take drastic action to save her. Convention of States has chosen the second option. By calling an Article V convention, we can finally propose amendments to deal with Washington’s out-of-control spending and ditch the corruption. If you are unwilling to leave $37 trillion in debt for future generations to pay off, sign the petition for an Article V convention below. # | PETITION_WIDGET{petition_tag:comms_blog_NA_08/18/2025_13insanenumberstoexplainthenationaldebt08132025;coalition_id:;anedot_url:} | # |
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| Created: | 2025-08-18 17:51 GMT |
| Updated: | 2025-08-25 07:00 GMT |
| Published: | 2025-08-18 18:00 GMT |
| Converted: | 2025-11-11 12:06 GMT |
| Change Author: | Jakob Fay |
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