I think people would take the debt more seriously if they hadn’t started hearing we’re going down and in Deep trouble from about the 5 trillion mark until today. When you hear that and then nothing happens, it becomes noise.
Greed is the problem. Most Americans were happy to have a home, a job, & a family that they could enjoy on a salary. But eventually people wanted more. There is no system that can sustain that, especially as populations grow.
They didn't want to have to do what it takes to generate wealth, they wanted an easier route.
Thus, games were played to increase the wealth of people, basically by taking the currency off of the god standard, which allowed for the money supply to grow. That works for a while, but when a majority of the rest of the world begins to feel the pinch that the strongest country, in this case the US, isn't affected, then the world starts to realize that powerful nation's money is becoming more & more worthless and they collectively start looking for an alternative, because the powerful nation cannot survive for long on that course, because they will eventually implode, which will affect the other nations negatively as well.