The US Gub’mnt has ASSETS so they can pay. We are far from being at the line where we will be forced to hand over anything other than more paper.
REAL value is how much someone WILL ACTUALLY pay for them.
The USS Ronald Reagan has a real value, that someone like the Chinese would pay. The US capitol not so much.
Then there is the question of who are the buyers?
There are 403 billionaires in the US. With a combined worth of approximately $1.3 Trillion.
2 problems here. First, all the worth of these billionaires isn't just sitting in some bank somewhere, as idle cash. Its locked up in ASSETS (just like the US ASSETS), in order for those billionaires to buy US assets, they would either have to borrow (go in debt, to pay off government debt) or sell their assets to buy other assets. The problem with this is, I doubt Bill Gates is willing to sell $66 billion in valuable stock, that makes money, to buy government land in New Mexico, that grows scrub grass. (Besides, if all the billionaires liquidated themselves to buy government assets, WHO would BUY their assets??? (And with all the billionaires selling off their assets, there would be a glut in the market, forcing stock prices to plummet, so Bill Gates wouldn't actually be worth $66 Billion, more like $10 Billion)
Next issue. Like I mentioned earlier, there are 403 billionaires in the US, currently worth about $1.3 Trillion. Their entire net worth is only about this years deficit. The entire US debt is over $16 Trillion.
Its easy to SAY that the US government has XXX amount in assets, its quite another thing to find buyers for those assets.
The point being, there isn't enough money in the world to pay off the debt.
BUT... if we keep printing it, there soon will be.