Understanding the Cuts | US Debt in Perspective

we are many decades into a seemingly never ending political talking point about how america needs to reduce it's debt.

today's culture war on helping others is only the latest smoke and mirrors to distract tackling challenges with real solutions and real tradeoffs.

reducing large numbers into smaller ones is a useful educational tool. i've seen it employed as well in understanding populations (ex: reduce the world to 100 people).

being able to toggle back and forth really helps build a strong bridge with the analogy (since, you can lose a lot in the reduction examples).

An interactive exploration of the US national debt, scaled down to comprehensible numbers to help understand the true scale of government finances. The site scales down all government finances by a factor of 36 million to bring these enormous numbers into a range that's easier to grasp, illustrating the scale challenge: while the savings from each cancelled grant might sound substantial in isolation, they represent an incredibly small fraction of the federal budget. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has cancelled 21,564 grants and contracts at a massive social cost to vulnerable communities, research programs, and essential services—all while reducing spending by just $1,773. Policy options that eclipse the DOGE savings include taxing all foreign income of U.S. corporations and taxing greenhouse gas emissions.