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US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

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Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#111

Post by ethbr0 »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #7
janandonly wrote: post #3

This is more a discussion of semantics than about the amount itself. The way I read the statistics is that the current debt is $28T of money that is already spent while the quoted debt of $146T is the amount of money needed to be spent to fill full current promises and expenses . It's interesting that since the USA got off the gold standard in 1971[1], and thereby all countries that had a currency backed by dollars,…

this is a good point. Everybody keep saying that US had a small inflation in the last 2 decades. Yes, prices of eggs/milk maybe didn't go up to0 much. But what about prices of child care, education, housing, health care, retirement. Yes all these have many factors behind their cost rise, but money printing just can't be ignored here.

You can have both inflation (in terms of purchasing power) and a simultaneous decrease in the cost of goods (in constant dollar terms).

If both of these happen to balance, prices appear to stay the same.

Presumably you'd only get a true number out of something (a) with a fixed amount in circulation, (b) internationally traded, & (c) universally valued. Even precious metals are subject to production costs and industrial consumption.

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#112

Post by DSMan195276 »

I honestly don't get why anybody ever mentions the "taxpayer's share" as though it means anything. Yes we have a lot of debt, but the debt has actual terms for paying it, it's not like someone can go "BTW we expect that $28T in the mail tomorrow" and we'd have to pay up.

IE. I own a house, which costs more than I make in a year. But the bank is not allowed to just email me tomorrow and ask for all the money, I have 30 years to pay it off with a set schedule I'm capable of meeting, so the actual amount of debt is pretty irrelevant.

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#113

Post by toomuchtodo »

ceejayoz wrote: post #75
toomuchtodo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago's pension debt continues to expand while its revenue is in peril [1] [2]. They will eventually need to reduce services and maximize revenue transfer to these obligations if they're unable to default or renegotiate them. Typically, your mortgage balance does not grow more rapidly than your household income (unless you have a negative amortization mortgage). The state attempted to pass a progressive income tax…

> Chicago’s pension debt soared by approximately $1.1 billion in 2020, according to the city’s audited annual financial report for 2020. So, by about 3%, and about 10% of annual revenue. (In an... unusual year.) Buy a house and chances are your debt soars by more than 10% of annual salary, right?

I don't believe you're making an accurate comparison between a household balance sheet and unfunded pension liabilities Chicago (and Illinois) have.

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#114

Post by pgisatool »

bojangleslover wrote: post #58
bserge wrote: post #11

Nobody cares anymore. People are working, resources are being extracted, created and traded, economies are rolling. Money is there to facilitate that, but on its own it's pretty much worthless. Just wish inequality wasn't so fucking huge.

Inequality is not necessarily a bad thing. http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html

Are you really citing a reactionary billionaire claiming that inequality is a good thing? I can't even imagine how sycophantic one would have to be to read all the way through that mess, holy shit.

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#115

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nickff wrote: post #102
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would also note that if you're incorporating unfunded future liabilities, it also makes sense to cancel out intergovernmental debt, e.g. Treasuries held by the Federal Reserve or by agencies.

You can't quite 'cancel out intergovernmental debt', as their sale (to extract their value) would cause devaluation. I am not sure how you would model the loss in value.

> You can't quite 'cancel out intergovernmental debt', as their sale (to extract their value) would cause devaluation

Not saying the U.S. default on that debt. Just that, for accounting purposes, if you're including far-in-the-future liabilities, you should also take into account the fact that every dollar of interest paid by the U.S. Treasury to the Fed ends up, more or less, back in the Treasury's account.

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#116

Post by msla »

TbobbyZ wrote: post #93
TbobbyZ wrote: post #13

Flat tax, cut spending, cut welfare programs, fire everyone in the government who overspends the budget during their term. Problem solved.

Ahhh I love left wing hacker news. Lots of down votes on conservative principles, zero responses.

Flat tax is regressive: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/flattax.asp

> While a flat tax imposes the same tax percentage on all individuals regardless of income, many see it as a regressive tax. A regressive tax is one in which the government taxes high-income earners at a lower percentage of their income and low-wage earners at a higher percentage of their income.

> The tax is seen as regressive due to a more significant portion of the total funds available to the low-income earner going to the tax expenditure. While the upper-income payer still pays the same percentage, they have enough income to offset this tax load.

Cutting spending never seems to involve military or police or coal subsidies...

"Welfare" doesn't exist anymore: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-welfare-dollars-do...

Fire anyone in government who overspends? OK, how do you define overspending?

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#117

Post by literallyaduck »

ivalm wrote: post #95
literallyaduck wrote: post #39

If America defaults and wipes the foreign debt, what happens worldwide?

Why would it default? It has USD (fiat it controls) denominated debt, it can literally pay any debt through monitory expansion.

Not that it would, it just a thought experiment.

Hyperinflation and passing the tax via watering down the money supply to the foreign investors is essential the same as default right?

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#118

Post by hartator »

Another figure I like to focus on it's public spending as percentage of GDP.

In 2020, the U.S. government has spent 46.18% of the total GPD. Which means almost half of every economic activities in the U.S. were directly spent by the government.

I think it's a more interesting number than debt or taxation as you can immediately see how much the government controls the economy whereas debt and taxation are just technically playing the money supply at the end of day.

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#119

Post by medvezhenok »

ceejayoz wrote: post #94
crobertsbmw wrote: post #82

I don’t understand how social security isn’t a pyramid scheme. It seems to me like something we should just do away with.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/is-soci... > The superficial similarity to a Ponzi scheme is that different sets of investors are relying on future investors, or at least future growth, to get paid back. But that defines a Ponzi scheme so broadly as to make the term meaningless. In that definition, any intergenerational transfer system is a Ponzi scheme. > What makes a Ponzi scheme a Ponzi scheme…

> In a Ponzi scheme, the finances are a secret, and that’s central to the enterprise.

Reminds me of the Ponzi that explicitly announced it was a ponzi scheme - kind of like a game of hot potato. You can profit as long as you're not the last one in. Or maybe that's just called crypto :)

Re: US Published National Debt: $28T. The Truth: $146T. Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k

#120

Post by bscphil »

jfengel wrote: post #30

It's a misleading way of calculating the number, since it refers to all of the future debt obligations, including Social Security out many decades -- but also ignoring the fact that we'll be collecting taxes all that time. It's a bit like concluding that you're a million dollars in debt because you are going to need to buy food for the rest of your life. I suppose it's true -- it is something you need to plan for. Bu…

The real misleading part, to the point of being actively malicious, is "Each Taxpayer's Share: $951k".

This is intended to make the median viewer, who will never see that much money at once in their entire life (and will take 20+ years to even make that much before-tax), feel that the Federal government is being irresponsible. It's an obvious push for fiscal conservatism which, crucially may or may not be warranted by the actual facts.

To state the obvious, most people out there do not make enough money to plausibly pay one million dollars in taxes. Therefore they will not be paying one million dollars in taxes (you can't squeeze blood from a stone). The inevitable result is that either the U.S. government is doomed to go bankrupt (what they want you to think), or rich people will be contributing more than that to the United States' debt obligation (hint: they already are).

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