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US debt visualized
- JonnieCache 15y agoHere's another fun one: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-billion-dollar-gram/ http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-bil...
- nuromancer 15y agoI would love to see a subsequent visualization illustrating where all this capital goes.
- ck2 15y agoMost of debt is from war because you don't have to have it funded to start one and once it's rolling well "gotta support the troops". Then the interest starts adding up fast. Since the WTC demo is reduced to "half trillion floors", that means half of the first floor would be the entire lifetime cost of the NASA shuttle program. Iraq War(s) would be the next five floors. Doesn't include Afghanistan or Libya or Yemen. Or our troop presence around the world like in Japan for some reason. Next two floors would be the cost for heath care and benefits for injured/killed troops through 2050.
- ddw 15y agoInteresting. I imagine it wouldn't have been too hard for the creators of this graphic to include that, but for some reason they left it out (hmm!). Good example of how data visualization can be misleading.
- melling 15y agoCan you provide a link that shows the actual numbers? This link says the war is $1.3 trillion. The national debt is $14 trillion. http://costofwar.com/en/ http://costofwar.com/en/
- potatolicious 15y agoI'm against the wars - but IMO there's a good reason the US has a presence around the world in places like Japan. The entire point of being a superpower is being able to project this power in any corner of the globe. China is investing heavily in its navy right now since it distinctly feels the lack of ability to do the same. When Chinese shipments came under pirate attack off the coast of Somalia, it took forever and a day for any forces to be dispatched, compared to the US whose naval and air presence is available within hours around the world by virtue of having bases in foreign countries.
- sigil 15y ago"Most of the debt is from war" is not true. This site has some good information: http://usgovernmentspending.com/ http://usgovernmentspending.com/
- grepittech 15y agoI would love for him to visualize how much we pay towards our debt each year in comparison to the actual debt.
- TomOfTTB 15y agoLast I heard we were estimated to be spending $533 billion per year in 2015 and that estimate was from 2009 (we've spent a lot more since then). So assuming that's brought us a little closer you can assume we'll be paying $500 billion in the next year or so. Meaning you can look at the One Trillion Visualization and cut it in half. Only source I could find for this: http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/19/news/economy/debt_interest/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/19/news/economy/debt_interest/i...
- sigil 15y agoTotal Federal spending is around $3.5 trillion a year these days. This and lots of other useful information can be found here: http://usgovernmentspending.com/ http://usgovernmentspending.com/
- ctdonath 15y agohttp://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm $385B of this year's spending is just paying interest on the debt. Scale the $1000B (one trillion) picture accordingly.
- astrofinch 15y agoSo what country should I flee to?
- eru 15y agoNorway. They have a net debt of around -150% of GDP, i.e. they _owe_ money.
- nkassis 15y agoIt would have made sense to compare that to total GDP or something other than a building, I find it kind of useless as it is. It's big but seriously you're talking about the largest economy in the world. I don't get all the irrational fear this is supposed to engender in the mind of people.
- TomOfTTB 15y agoVisualizations are never meant to be rational. What they can do, if effective, is over rule other irrational judgments. For instance, I'd contend your view (that the debt is no big deal) is irrational. Had this worked on you it would have at least gotten you to admit it is a big deal. Just so I don't get accused of making ad hominems let me explain my contention above. You seem to think the size of the debt isn't a big deal because it is small compared to GDP. That would be an effective argument if the question was "will the U.S. go bankrupt" But when people are assessing how big a problem the debt is the question they are asking is how much it will impact our overall standard of living when we inevitably have to start paying it off. So how big it is in comparison to GDP isn't all that relevant. The question is how much of an impact it will make. To give an example 10% of your income isn't that big in comparison to your whole income. But if someone were to take that 10% away every month it would have a sizable impact on your overall life.
- nkassis 15y ago"But when people are assessing how big a problem the debt is the question they are asking is how much it will impact our overall standard of living when we inevitably have to start paying it off" Fair point but will we have to pay it back? That's the funny thing about Government debt, while it's definitively a drag on the economy, the larger it is the larger the economy has to grow but as long as you stay ahead of the interest and roll it over (when bonds expire replace with other bonds...). There is no payoff date or whatever. The gov has infinite life (theoretically) and get take forever to pay it back. The debt can exist (and has existed) forever. Slowly grow forever as long as it's not growing faster than the economy can bare. (this is why I think comparing to GDP is valuable) Having a deficit every year isn't the problem, it's the size that matters. Surplus are definitively better, not arguing that but paying off the debt is never going to happen, making it smaller is also probably not going to happen significantly for a long time. Until better time show up. And with the economy right now, you won't manage to get a surplus without completely destroying the standard of living you speak of by eliminating a huge number of gov programs. You do cuts in good times not bad. The government needs to be able to borrow during the bad economic times. (Unless my understanding of Keynesian economics is completely faulty or you disagree with him completely. "Just so I don't get accused of making ad hominems let me explain my contention above." I wasn't seeing anything personal in there but thanks for explaining your view. I hope you will see my post the same way.
- winternett 15y agoWhere is this stack of money located? I'd like to visit it and take a souvenir.
- cpeterso 15y agoThe money is near the Statue of Liberty.
- tmorton 15y agoThis is exactly the wrong sort of visualization. It provides no information other than "big number is big, lol." The US debt is a big number. So big that people have a hard time wrapping their head around it. They need a point of comparison. So what's a good point of comparison for the US debt? Hmm... we could use the federal budget, or GDP, or the world GDP, or the debt of other large nations. Or we could break it down per capita, and compare it to other per-capita things, like income or tax burden. Or... I know! We can convert the thing to hundred dollar bills, and put it next to the statue of liberty! That's a meaningful comparison!
- joelhaus 15y agoAgreed. This visualization is only interesting to someone obsessed with the physical size of paper currency. Planet Money recently did a nice job of comparing the current U.S. debt level and the historic debt levels of other countries to GDP, and how that impacted their economic fate: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/20/138518262/the-tuesday-podcast-how-much-debt-is-too-much http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/20/138518262/the-tues...
- kristiandupont 15y agoI agree although I think this sort of visualization does provide some perspective of how much "trillion" actually means which can be hard to grasp when just seeing the zeroes.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nuromancer 15y agoThe statue of liberty/wtc is somewhat of a silly point of comparison for national debt but grounding numbers into something familiar or in this case physical objects is quite telling for most people. Even if your point of comparison is "the federal budget/GDP/world GDP/debt of other large nations" it goes back to the same issue where you are comparing large numbers to other large numbers which is meaningless to most people(outside of HN). I wouldn't use this type of visualization to brief congress but it is telling.
- chrismealy 15y agoPublic debt = net private sector savings. Nobody gets worked up over the private sector saving too much.
- walkon 15y agoIt absolutely does not. Have you heard of the QE* programs from the Fed?
- chrismealy 15y agoIf the Fed buys bonds it's paying cash for them. Net savings doesn't change. It's just changing the duration of the savings.
- bzbarsky 15y agoThat equality holds globally. It only holds for a particular country if its trade balance is 0. Otherwise, you have to add in the trade deficit/surplus in the equation. In the case of the US, the trade balance is pretty nonzero. So part of the US public debt is counterbalanced by public assets or private saving in other countries, not private sector savings in the US. And you do see people worked up over other countries holding US bonds as assets, in fact. (Or put another way, the Chinese government has a policy regime that forces Chinese consumers to oversave and at the same time does not issue enough of its own public debt to absorb that savings, so part of that savings ends up absorbed by public debt in other countries. Same for Germany and Japan.)
- nhaehnle 15y agoYou are right, but then the question is what you do about it. Imposing austerity measures domestically is going to hurt American citizens long before the trade balance moves sufficiently. If China is so hell-bent on sending you guys lots of stuff in exchange for numbers in some database, why don't you just sit back and enjoy? The only way I see to change the trade balance unilaterally from the US point of view would be to impose tariffs and other artificial trade barriers. That would certainly help if your goal is to stop the net imports, but then you have to ask yourself whether you really want that.
- csomar 15y agoWhat's wrong with debt? With loans I was able to speed up my progress. I took loans two times and ready to take it the next time. You'll need just to be certain that you'll pay off. There is risk, but risk is everywhere you do business.
- jodrellblank 15y agoWhat's wrong is someone else getting into debt on my behalf, promising to pay it back with money they will take from me by threat of force as taxes, for purposes I wasn't consulted on, to further an unsustainable goal of perpetual growth which is hurrying the arrival of global problems.
- VladRussian 15y ago"Government and State 101" in one sentence.
- csomar 15y agoSo you need to clarify things: The problem is not with the debt but with the government.
- jodrellblank 15y agoWelllll, I can see why a person or company or country benefits from ability to borrow, and I can see how investors benefit from being able to lend with interest, and I see how we all benefit from a society where developments happen faster because borrowing/lending is an allowed trade. But somewhere between that, and the large scale results of that, my comprehension fails, and instead it feels like a bad idea.
- rbranson 15y agoDebt isn't the problem, it's that it's not paid down when there is a surplus. We chose to cut taxes or create new entitlements instead of paying down the debt. Postscript: The "take from me by threat of force as taxes" makes you sound like a tea party nutbag or at best an angsty teen that despises parental authority. Perhaps you should have been born in a remote jungle to fend for yourself when you were a child instead of forced to live in a society which protected and educated you? At least you would have been free.
- username3 15y agoWe need 11.45 billion volunteers to work for 92 years.
- invalidOrTaken 15y agoOr (one hopes) agree to give up their social security benefits. I wish my generation could negotiate as a block and say something equivalent to, "We'll surrender any possibility of SS benefits---and still pay payroll tax---in exchange for an assurance that the new paper leeway won't be used as an excuse to spend more."
- draggnar 15y agoal jazeera did a very good video showing the greek debt also using pallets (http://www.wesoscrewed.com/2011/07/19/pallets-upon-pallets-of-cash-the-greek-debt-visualized/ http://www.wesoscrewed.com/2011/07/19/pallets-upon-pallets-o...). there is just something about seeing that amount of money in cash on pallets that makes me sick to my stomach. Talk about a huge hole to climb out of...
- scarmig 15y agoNot a particularly useful exercise. Imagine 100 years from now we've maintained the same debt level. This graph will show just as much information (big numbers are big!) as it does now, but the analytical value of it (if it exists now) will obviously be totally dissipated, as we'll be an order of magnitude richer. A better comparison would be to take a single person, and put the per capita amount of debt in $100 bills next to them. If you want to get really histrionic, do it with a baby. Still, it won't come up past the ankles (around $15,000). This isn't a small amount, but at the same time it's not the end of the world. My college loans come out to that amount, and I barely notice paying them monthly. It's equivalent to having a mortgage-sized to around five times your annual income. An annual income that typically grows 2.5% a year and comes with a machine that prints out money whenever you need it. Edit: typo in Google search, it's more like $50k than $15k. So a bit worse than that analysis would suggest.
- orangecat 15y agoA better comparison would be to take a single person, and put the per capita amount of debt in $100 bills next to them. If you want to get really histrionic, do it with a baby. Still, it won't come up past the ankles (around $15,000). More like $45k.
- scarmig 15y agoYeah, left off the tens (of trillions) digit when I calculated it.
- MichaelApproved 15y agoJust use the debt clock http://www.usdebtclock.org/ http://www.usdebtclock.org/ It shows $46,571 per citizen and, more importantly, $129,902 per tax payer.
- chailatte 15y agoAlso note - $1,026,647 unfunded liabilities per tax payer.
- th0ma5 15y agoSome other physical comparisons that could have been included are actually the size of stacking 400 million people on top of each other, how big that would be, and also how much food they would eat in their lifetime, and how much oil and/or plastic goods they would consume. Other than that, I agree with a lot of the other comments here, big numbers are big. "I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." - HHGTTG
- brimpa 15y agoI know this wasn't the point but I definitely didn't know a 747 was that big.
- Vivtek 15y agoMan. Those graphics are beautifully rendered. What would be the best tool to do something like that?
- ulisesroche 15y agoI've always liked (and would have used) Blender for stuff like this.
- nl 15y agoFor that graphic to be any use at all, it needs to show the size of the US economy in comparison. A $400,000 home loan looks pretty big if you visualize it in 1 cent pieces, but if you put it next to a $100,000 salary it looks pretty reasonable. "US Unfunded Liabilities" is a stupid thing to measure anyway. That's like putting all your household expenses for the next 30 years on mortgage graph. Yes, you will need to pay them, but they aren't a debt at all. Personally, I prefer seeing debt as a percentage of GDP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Measuring_debt_relative_to_gross_domestic_product_.28GDP.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Measu...
- ctdonath 15y agoThe point is they're unfunded: we don't know where the money is coming from, short of raising taxes or printing more. It's like putting the kids' college educations on a graph and realizing there's no current or future income/savings to cover it.
- maguay 15y agoWait, wait: "Unless the U.S. government fixes the budget, nation's CREDIT CARD debt will topple 15 trillion by Christmas 2011." Is this meaning US consumer credit card debt? If so, that's hardly the US government budget's fault. That one is odd at best.
- maguay 15y agoAlso: "If you like this, support it by checking out the ads on top right." Right. And it's against Adsense terms to ask people to click your ads. What a mess.
- roel_v 15y agoI understood that as a style figure meaning 'the US government is using borrowed money, like a credit card'. I think it's quite disingenuous. (maybe I'm wrong - I'd do a first-order validation of the idea by dividing 15 trillion by the amount of us citizens, but I don't quite know now many zeroes there are in 15 trillion and if it's effected by false friends like 'billion' (meaning: 'billion' in English has a different amount of zeroes as the homophones in other languages)).
- eru 15y agoAnd British English used to use different conventions from American English, too.
- known 15y agoAmerica is safe as long as dollar is world reserve currency
- ljf 15y agoThe sites creator should watch themselves suggesting people click on the adverts... Good chance they won't end up with the payments, as this breaks nearly all PPC companies ad rules...
- known 15y agobetween 1944 to 1963 US personal income tax rate was 92%
- gopi 15y agoNo self respecting rich guy paid that much...You have to talk about the effective tax rate (both personal and capital gain). This was always around 30% in the last 70-80 years! So the best thing to do is to abolish all deductions for the rich and reduce the top tax rate to something like 28% (which the new debt commission recommended)