3 ms·

This already happened a couple years ago. Perhaps you mean 200% Debt-to-GDP in 10 years?

rayiner 14y ago
So the 100% figure includes US government debt owed to the Social Security trust fund (and other intra-governmental debt). Excluding that amount it's about 70%. Now it's a matter of choice in how you portray it, but you have to be consistent. You can either say we have 100% debt-to-GDP as well as $4.8 trillion sitting in the social security trust, or you can say we have 70% debt-to-GDP and nothing in the bank. You cannot say we have 100% debt-to-GDP and nothing in the bank--that's just incorrect. I think the social security trust fund accounting gimmick is silly, so I consider us as having a 70% debt-to-GDP ($10.9 trillion in real debt). This is the same view the CBO takes. That's set to rise to 100% of GDP by 2022 under current policies, but fall to under 60% of GDP by 2022 if the fiscal cliff is allowed to happen.
- anonymoushn 14y ago
  They seem to have less than $3T [1]. $4.8T seems to be the right figure for intra-governmental debt, which is probably the right thing to be subracting out anyway. Thanks for educating me about this! [1] - http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/assets.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/assets.html
- TomatoTomato 14y ago
  If you consider unfunded liabilities (which obviously can be adjusted and is hard to calculate) you can add anywhere from 50-200 Trillion. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-06-06-us-owes-62-trillion-in-debt_n.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-06-06-us... http://www.usdebtclock.org/ http://www.usdebtclock.org/
  - rayiner 14y ago
    The USA Today article is a bunch of scare-mongering for the innumerate. It's easy to make numbers look big and scary when you add them up over a 75 year time horizon without accounting for GDP and population growth. It's also a load of crock to call medicare/social security "unfunded liabilities" and add them to the debt, because they are not binding obligations. The government can cancel medicare tomorrow and there would be no recourse. Medicare/Social Security liability over 75 years is not like the federal debt--it's simply a projected expenditure on some particular entitlement program. The sensible comparison is the cost of these programs relative to GDP. That's the only relevant way to present the data. Social Security is projected to rise in cost from 4.8% of GDP to 6.2% of GDP by 2035. That's the impact of your "$63 trillion unfunded liability" on the budget over that time frame. Medicare is a bigger problem, but too much of the debate revolves around scare-mongering projecting rising healthcare costs out to infinity. See: http://xkcd.com/605/ http://xkcd.com/605/
bunderbunder 14y ago
So sad. Before the Bush tax cuts, we were projecting that the big debt landmark for around that time would be paying it off.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  >So sad. Before Y2K we were prejecting that the big debt landmark for around that time would be paying it off. You could also add 9/11, two expensive wars (because the US can't stomach losing soldiers the way it used to, and protecting soldiers cost a fortune) and a huge recession that we are still not out of. The projections assumed that everything would be running the way it was in the late 1990's. It didn't.

So the 100% figure includes US government debt owed to the Social Security trust fund (and other intra-governmental debt). Excluding that amount it's about 70%. Now it's a matter of choice in how you portray it, but you have to be consistent. You can either say we have 100% debt-to-GDP as well as $4.8 trillion sitting in the social security trust, or you can say we have 70% debt-to-GDP and nothing in the bank. You cannot say we have 100% debt-to-GDP and nothing in the bank--that's just incorrect. I think the social security trust fund accounting gimmick is silly, so I consider us as having a 70% debt-to-GDP ($10.9 trillion in real debt). This is the same view the CBO takes. That's set to rise to 100% of GDP by 2022 under current policies, but fall to under 60% of GDP by 2022 if the fiscal cliff is allowed to happen.

anonymoushn 14y ago
They seem to have less than $3T [1]. $4.8T seems to be the right figure for intra-governmental debt, which is probably the right thing to be subracting out anyway. Thanks for educating me about this! [1] - http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/assets.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/assets.html
TomatoTomato 14y ago
If you consider unfunded liabilities (which obviously can be adjusted and is hard to calculate) you can add anywhere from 50-200 Trillion. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-06-06-us-owes-62-trillion-in-debt_n.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-06-06-us... http://www.usdebtclock.org/ http://www.usdebtclock.org/
- rayiner 14y ago
  The USA Today article is a bunch of scare-mongering for the innumerate. It's easy to make numbers look big and scary when you add them up over a 75 year time horizon without accounting for GDP and population growth. It's also a load of crock to call medicare/social security "unfunded liabilities" and add them to the debt, because they are not binding obligations. The government can cancel medicare tomorrow and there would be no recourse. Medicare/Social Security liability over 75 years is not like the federal debt--it's simply a projected expenditure on some particular entitlement program. The sensible comparison is the cost of these programs relative to GDP. That's the only relevant way to present the data. Social Security is projected to rise in cost from 4.8% of GDP to 6.2% of GDP by 2035. That's the impact of your "$63 trillion unfunded liability" on the budget over that time frame. Medicare is a bigger problem, but too much of the debate revolves around scare-mongering projecting rising healthcare costs out to infinity. See: http://xkcd.com/605/ http://xkcd.com/605/

bunderbunder 14y ago

So sad. Before the Bush tax cuts, we were projecting that the big debt landmark for around that time would be paying it off.

tomjen3 14y ago
>So sad. Before Y2K we were prejecting that the big debt landmark for around that time would be paying it off. You could also add 9/11, two expensive wars (because the US can't stomach losing soldiers the way it used to, and protecting soldiers cost a fortune) and a huge recession that we are still not out of. The projections assumed that everything would be running the way it was in the late 1990's. It didn't.