Much has been written about the US government’s total debt outstanding, which equals the cumulative sum of all the deficits in annual budgets to date, less the years when we had surpluses. Of course, the last years of surplus in the budget were 1998-2001 (all but eight months of that under President Bill Clinton, under whose administration income tax revenues were 19.5% of GDP). The total debt now stands at about $36 trillion, or 36 followed by 12 zero’s. So how did we get here?