A quick look at household debt

The graph shows Dollars of Household Debt per Dollar of Principal Repaid:

Graph #1: Household debt per dollar of household debt repaid  1980-2021

In 2007, shortly before the financial crisis, the debt we ("households") owed was 25 times the principal we repaid that year. Maybe that doesn't sound insurmountable to you. But at that level, with an interest rate of anything over four percent, interest adds more to our debt than we are paying back.