You shouldn't look at the debt alone. It's not inflation adjusted, and it doesn't account for the economy being far larger today than it was in the 1920s.
Debt to GDP is a better measure. We basically matched WWII on that metric, but the congressional budget office projects we'll exceed that going forward.
That looks like unadjusted dollars? It's a crazy graph, as the biggest pre-pandemic event in USA fiscal history (World War II) is simply invisible on this graph. As a point of comparison USA debt hit 101% of GDP in 1946, a level we only rose above recently, because of the pandemic:
Why was this downvoted? World War II was the largest fiscal event in USA history (before the pandemic) and it is invisible on this graph, therefore the graph has little explanatory power. Why would I be downvoted for pointing that out?
I don't know why you got downvoted -- but there is a definitely a visible artifact on that chart between 1939 and 1946, it's just not all that huge compared to modern deficit spending.
Right, but it should be huge, it was only significantly surpassed by the pandemic in 2020, which is a clue that these are unadjusted dollars, and so the graph lacks any explanatory power.
I hate to be a conspiracy theorist but if covid was made in a lab this seems like the biggest grift of all time. I can't imagine how much of that money just disappeared.
The country?
This chart from the Fed is just astounding. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD