Uhhh, honestly, we don’t owe that much money.
Our national debt at the moment sits just under 14 trillion dollars (our GDP is just over 14 trillion). Of that national debt, OVER HALF is owned by US citizens. The remaining amount is owned largely by Japan and Europe, with China being the biggest up and comer and purchasing the most in the last decade or so.
This debt is sold in the form of treasury bonds, and was a practice put in place by the founding fathers at the very start of our nation. You see having A national debt is actually a good thing for your economy. The government sells you a bond (which is basically a stock, so you’re buying “stock” in the country), and gets the money up front for spending on whatever it needs. On the back end when you cash that bond in you get interest on it. Usually the interest is really low (compared at least to most real stocks), but if you buy a lot of bonds or wait long enough it will be worth a good amount of return on investment (more than most savings accounts typically, I think I cashed some out given to me in 1985 at birth for like 1.5 or 2% annual interest a couple years ago).
National debt is usually measured against the nations GDP (the amount of money we make in a single year). A “healthy” national debt is arguably considered to be about 75% of GDP. As you can tell by my first paragraph, our national debt is ALMOST at 100% GDP right now. But its been far higher than this. During and after WW2 and the Civil War our national debt was in excess of 150% GDP. It has NEVER Been lower than 50% GDP.
The real thing that should make you not worry, is that the government can’t force countries like China to buy our bonds. China is doing it of their own free will, and banking on the US continuing to succeed and be a thriving nation, hence giving them a good return on investment. You’ll want to start worrying when China and other countries STOP buying our bonds.