Japan is at well over 200%, and has a very real population crisis.
Italy is 138%, France is at 117%, Canada is at 110%. UK and China are around 100%.
123% comparatively speaking isn't great, but it's not shockingly terrible.
U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
101–110 of 233 posts
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#102Upsetting how we are reaching these lows while the administration is accusing everyone else of wasting taxpayer money except for themselves. At least under previous administrations you would get something for your money, like science funding and healthcare for the needy, not just bombing runs and posturing.
[flagged]
I'm so glad we rearranged those deck chairs.
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that half the political system thinks you can cut taxes and grow revenues. Which is an intentional strategy to repeal social programs that they’d never get the votes to do so via legislation
[flagged]
Quick search says that list is a mix of misleading and untrue.
That said, 1.5 million on goats, 1 on cows, 1.7 million on fish, these are all perfectly reasonable research costs compared to the potential benefit to agriculture on the scale of the USA, well within the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" kind of territory; likewise 5 on an anti-smoking campaign and th health burden of smoking in a nation as big as the USA.
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
You made a tiny mistake, you forgot the $800 billion for the military!
Even more
$859 billion to DoD
$339 billion Veterans benefits
Then when we look at the $952 billion in interest, a good chunk of that is due to past military spending.
Plus even more - tens of billions of the military nuclear budget is done via the DoE, not the DoD in the budget line.
There's always a hand waving that previous debts accumulated like veteran's benefits and military related debt interest are not military spending, but they obviously are.
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#105The US Dollar is chronically over-valued because of its reserve currency status. The US wanted it that way, opposing Keynes proposal of an international clearing union using a clearing currency (which he called the Bancor) that is independent of any specific country. This automatically means that US companies suffer a huge competitive disadvantage which results in an external deficit. The foreign sector accumulates dollar savings. Now the US household sector naturally also runs a surplus. This only leaves the companies and the government which must by logic of sectoral balances run a deficit for the economy not to shrink. The companies are in aggregate also running a surplus since the neoliberal shift and that leaves only one sector that must have a matching deficit if you want to at least keep up economic activity. If the government sector wants to run a surplus that automatically and necessarily must mean that one of the other sectors must run a deficit by logic of accounting. Which one should that be and how do you want to force it to run a deficit? The foreign sector is not an option as long as the US Dollar is the dominant reserve currency because it is overvalued. The households are a natural saver almost always running a surplus. That leaves only the companies to run a deficit. Now how do you get the companies to run a deficit (in aggregate of course, we are not talking about a single company)? You need to make them invest more than they earn. This used to be the role the company sector had until the 70s. Since then we got Thatcher and Reagan with financialization, deregulation, pressure on wages (they fell from about 70% of GDP to about 60%). The government will have to run massive deficits just to keep the economy going unless we roll that back.
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always heard people say that the US debt doesn't matter when the debt itself is denominated in USD. It's the old saying, if you owe the bank $1,000 then you have a problem. But if you owe the bank a trillion dollars then the bank has a problem. Especially when that trillion dollars was spent on an insane fleet of aircraft carriers.
This idea is based on the fantasy idea of "it's fine because the US can just inflate away its currency to reduce its debts". This is also often used as an argument for why countries shouldn't join the Euro because they'd be giving up an important tool. The reality is that purposefully inflating your currency to reduce your debt burden is going to upset your creditors just as much as if you just defaulted on your debt…
To be fair, it wasn't 6%. The consumer basket gets manipulated in all sorts of ways, but in general it's just not an accurate representation of day to day impact. Food and housing went up much much higher than 6%.
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
No you forgot the wasted spending on Social Security, Medicaid, and other subsidies! See, other people can throw in snide remarks too. There's room to debate military spending, but if you view the world as a dangerous place and that the US should not become isolationist, we have to spend the money and have equipment ready and capable whether that's in Europe or in Asia. Alternatively we can disband much of the milita…
> No you forgot the wasted spending on Social Security [...] See, other people can throw in snide remarks too. No, snide and wrong is extremely different! Social Security spending is already funded by a separate tax and currently running a surplus. It's what our legislators are are debt to when use the discretionary budget to let the President start a game of Battleship in the straight of Hormuz.
> No, snide and wrong is extremely different!
Snide and wrong! You must be talking about the OP then and not me.
> Social Security spending is already funded by a separate tax and currently running a surplus.
If someone doesn't want to pay in to it, what difference does whether it's fully-funded or not make?
> It's what our legislators are are debt to when use the discretionary budget to let the President start a game of Battleship in the straight of Hormuz.
Or when they enact a pet project you agree with and others disagree with.
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right they (the politicians) don't actually think that, they just say that to get cooked projections. Once those revenue projections turn out to be false, it doesn't matter because they already have their tax cuts baked in. Then everyone can blame the other side for deficits and campaign on fixing it. Rinse and repeat.
Let's be clear and not do this both sides thing - by "they" we mean Republicans. You may not agree with their policies or what they want to spend money on, but Democrats (at least in aggregate) live in the real world where they acknowledge for the government to spend money they will have to raise taxes. Republicans are the only party that in the 21st century acts as though we can simultaneously cut taxes and increase…
As far as I have seen, in federal politics, the majority(left and right) spends, while taxes in general have not been significantly increased or decreased(percentage). What you are talking about is their rhetoric, which may be rhetorical itself.
What does change(and is more important) is Debt/Revenue:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=TZfm
The ratio is looking like it is trending in the right direction. If GDP decreases while nominal tax receipts increase, GDP does not change the debt, while the debt/Revenue ratio looks good for paying bills, while not boding well for economic health.
What is this "real world" you are referring to? There has to be a balance between current and future expenditures and economic health to facilitate these. Nothing exists in a vacuum.
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#109I wonder what the exit plan is. One time conversion of social security into Trump accounts and call it a day?
just want to say, whether you like the name/admin or not those accounts are a very good deal. Setting up one for a new born is a get-out-financial-mistakes (cc/student loan debt etc) free card when they grow up and get access to the money. If you're smart and can make some decent deposits in the first year or two that could easily become a buy-a-house-for-free card which would be an absolute treasure for kickstarting a young person's financial life.
It's too late for my kids but if i'm ever lucky enough to have grandkids part of their bday and Christmas gifts will be deposits.
Re: U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
This idea is based on the fantasy idea of "it's fine because the US can just inflate away its currency to reduce its debts". This is also often used as an argument for why countries shouldn't join the Euro because they'd be giving up an important tool. The reality is that purposefully inflating your currency to reduce your debt burden is going to upset your creditors just as much as if you just defaulted on your debt…
To be fair, it wasn't 6%. The consumer basket gets manipulated in all sorts of ways, but in general it's just not an accurate representation of day to day impact. Food and housing went up much much higher than 6%.
Whatever the number is, we know for a fact that it was
1. Extremely painful to Americans, and became one of the main pillars of their election.
2. Nowhere near high enough to cause any reduction in the USA's debt burden.
I think modern Americans are way too soft to even imagine the sort of inflation that'd be required to erase their debts. Things have been too good and too stable for too long to understand what country-wide economic hardship would be like, and even if they somehow decided to choose that path, they'd panic quit it long before it was done long enough to have any effect.