The amounts of the federal debt are listed in Table 50 for various years.

Let y be the federal debt (in billions of dollars) at x years since 1960.
a. Find a regression equation.
b. Estimate the federal debt in 2014. Use units of trillions of dollars and round to the second decimal place.
c. If the federal debt had been paid off in 2014 by each U.S. citizen contributing an equal amount of money, how much would each person have had to pay? Round to the ones place. The population was 319 million in 2014.
d. Predict the federal debt in 2050. Use units of trillions of dollars and round to the second decimal place. Do you have much faith in this prediction? Explain.
e. Assuming the result you found in part (d) is correct, if the federal debt were paid off in 2050 by each U.S. citizen contributing an equal amount of money, how much would each person have to pay? Round to the ones place. Assume the population will be 439 million in 2050. Explain why some people want to reduce or eliminate the debt now rather than later.

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Table 50 Federal Debt Amounts Federal Debt (billions of dollars) Year 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015 291 381 909 3206 5629 13,529 18,152