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Because that's $80,000 that the government owes them.

Okay, only a portion of that debt is owned by private US entities, but it's a large portion.


According to this article 45% of US Government debt (Treasuries) is owned by foreign countries. So the government owes us $44000 actually. The rest is owned by other countries. On the surface that is scary because if the countries sold their treasuries at the same time the US would probably have to default. But that won't happen, if it did the entire financial system would collapse.