Mia was doing homework at the kitchen table. Social studies. She had a question about government.

"Dad, what's the national debt?"

I sat down next to her. "The government spends more money than it has. So it borrows money."

"Like when I want a toy but I don't have enough allowance?"

"Sort of. But bigger. Much bigger."

She pulled out her phone and searched. Her eyes went wide. "Thirty-four trillion dollars? That's a real number?"

"Yeah."

"Dad, I can't even imagine a trillion. How much is that?"

I tried the old comparisons. Seconds in time. Stacks of bills. None of it worked. Numbers that big don't make sense to anyone.

"OK forget how much. Here's the real question. Who do we owe it to?"

She looked at her worksheet. "Other countries?"

"Some. But most of it we owe to ourselves."

"That's impossible. You can't owe money to yourself."

I paused. She was right. How do you explain something that makes no sense?

"The government creates money. Then it borrows that money. And pays interest on it."

"To who?"

"Banks. The Federal Reserve."

"But who owns the Federal Reserve?"

I opened my laptop. We looked it up together. Private banks. Not really government. Not really private. Something in between.

"So we create money. Then we borrow it from banks. Then we pay them interest. Forever."

"Dad, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

I couldn't argue with her logic.

"What if we just didn't borrow the money?"

"Then we'd have to spend what we actually have."

"Like me with my allowance."

"Exactly like you with your allowance."

She was quiet for a minute. "Bitcoin doesn't work like this, does it?"

"No. Nobody can create new bitcoin whenever they want. There's only 21 million total. Ever."

"So nobody can borrow bitcoin that doesn't exist?"

"Right."

She closed her worksheet. "This homework is stupid."

"Why?"

"Because they're teaching us a broken system like it's normal."

Out of the mouths of babes.