Chapter 5: Positive and Negative Decimal Numbers Numbers in the Real World

National Debt How much is our nation in debt?  You can get the latest daily figures from the The Public Debt To the Penny page of the U.S. Treasury. As of 08/14/1997, the debt is $5,380,074,522,588.27 And according to the POPClock Projection page of the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 267,908,217 people currently in the U.S. as of this date.  You can get up-to-the-second figures at this page. Use division to find the amount of debt each person in the U.S. would have if we split up the national debt among all U.S. citizens.  According to the Household and Family Characteristics: March 1996 page from the U.S. Census Bureau, there are an average number of 2.65 people per household.  How much debt would each household have to pay to zero out the national debt based on the above numbers?  Explain what it means by 2.65 people per household.  How can that be? Since the figures above are very good estimates but not necessarily the actual values, round off the earlier answers to the nearest hundred and then thousand. Debt per person?         Debt per household?    Go to the sites mentioned above and get the most current numbers on the national debt and population. Compute debt per person.  List the actual number and then a rounded form.    Compute debt per household.  List the actual number and then a rounded form.    How much would we have to reduce the debt by in order for the debt per person to reach $2,000,000,000,000?