The debt issue is greatly over exaggerated. The US as a whole owns over 300 trillion in assets and trillions more in untouched resources. The US isn't broke and it isn't poor. It only feels poor because
- our capitalist system is nearly the worst possible system for distributing resources where they actually need to go and
- Capitalists use their resources to corrupt and bend our government to their will which results in car centric urban sprawl that is 5x less resource efficient.
For example, if we built public transit and walkable cities we could make transit completely free and it would cost far less than subsidizing car dependency. But we can't do that nation wide because it would devalue the car industry, the asphalt industry, rubber industry, and the oil industry. Under capitalism, the profits of the 0.1% always take priority over what benefits the 99%
Worse still, half of the wood from these trees was rendered unusable when the massive trees hit the ground