John Green dispels many of the misconceptions about debts and deficits, along the way explaining why the current state of affairs is not a crisis, but could turn into one (h/t The Big Picture).

It’s still surprising to me to hear or read what is probably the most important misconception about government debt – that it all has to be paid off someday. In fact, I think former presidential candidate Mitt Romney used to talk about paying down the debt, like he was going to produce sufficient surpluses to have actually made a difference. The problem is that governments around the world have had a pretty good time in recent decades growing their debt (as a share of GDP) and, unfortunately, you can’t do that forever.