Americans Hold Over $4.1T in Consumer Debt
The United States has a total resident population (as of January 23, 2017) of 324,420,000 people (about 324 million).  Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Demographics_of_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...</a><p>Thus, $4.1 trillion in consumer debt works out to $12,638 per person.<p>The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the United States was worth 18036.65 billion (about $18 trillion) US dollars in 2015.  That is about $55,424 per person.<p>Note that the &quot;consumer debt&quot; is divided into several categories.<p>Student loans represent a long term investment and may be reasonably paid off over decades.<p>Auto loans are typically paid off in 3-5 years.<p>Ideally, credit card debt should be paid off immediately.  It is difficult to evaluate credit card debt because credit cards have increasingly become the substitute for cash in the United States.  How much of the debt is extremely short term and essentially represents what used to be cash transactions?<p>What is &quot;other&quot; consumer debt -- payday loans? IOU&#x27;s?<p>The point is that $4.1 trillion in consumer debt in a nation with over 300 million people and a GDP over $18 trillion per year is neither unreasonable nor a crisis, particularly when that debt includes longer term items such as auto loans and student loans.