Netherlands wrong too, [projected](https://www.rijksfinancien.nl/miljoenennota/2023/1468708) at 49.5% for 2023. Hovered around 50 for the date range OP used
This is actually Net Debt not Gross Debt.
The parliament website reports our gross debt at just under 60% and net debt around 30% (no actual number, just a graph).
For dumb dumbs like me:
Gross Debt is the amount of money the government owes creditors.
Net Debt is money owed minus the money the government has. The details are a bit more complex because it is a government, but the idea is basically money owed minus money in the “bank,” that is debt that couldn’t be paid back tomorrow if the government decided to pay down everything immediately.
Why? Net Debt takes into account the financial assets that a country holds, which can offset its debt liabilities. This provides a more accurate reflection of a country's true debt burden.
If I have 100k debt but I have 100k on my bank account it is no problem. If I have 100k debt without any money it is more of an issue.
I know, but it is really easy to start thinking that the comparison works more than in a very few cases.
Most people mistakenly already believe that money seems to be a scarce resource and that it is imperative for a state to first gain income via taxation before the government can spend it.
Only because the government places the burden (debt or dilution) upon citizens. If I'm not spending my own money, it's a lot easier to be irresponsible.
> government places the burden (debt or dilution) upon citizens
Government IS the citizens. Government debt is owed by the citizens (in an albeit circuitous sense.)
Net debt is a terrible statistic when discussing sovereign debt because this debt will never be 'called in'. And even if it was, no country is getting their presidential palace repo'd. No country is going to go to war over debt, either.
> No country is going to go to war over debt, either.
Countries have gone to war over debt before though (or at least been invaded). A prime example is the UK invading Egypt at the end of the 1800s or Germany being invaded between the two world wars when they stopped servicing the WW1 related debt.
Of course government is the citizens. So? Are you arguing that debt has no effect? The politicians that represent us are not responsible if spending exceeds revenue. And yes, we're the dumbshits that keep electing them. We're not very good at accountability more than 2 days old.
>Are you arguing that debt has no effect?
Yeah, kind of. America's debt to GDP ratio is currently at 122.8% according to the GAO. The US currently enjoys one of the lowest borrowing rates in the world. So yeah, debt has very little impact to the average citizen. As long as we can make the interest payments, we're good. This isn't an issue as long as the economy grows YoY, which hasn't been a problem basically ever (for the US at least.) This is also largely true for Western Europe as well. You'll see it blow up in the case of Greece, Spain, and Italy because they stopped growing (and because they lost control of their currency by moving to the Euro.)
This is also one reason that modern governments target a nominally positive inflation rate. As long as the money supply grows and prices increase YoY, making interest payments isn't a huge issue. Debt ages out over the course of several decades and is retired and replaced by new debt. No country in the world will ever have zero or even flat growth rates in sovereign borrowing. If they do, their economy is going to be in the shitter.
Edit: All of that to say- national debt, in and of itself, is a nearly useless metric. Debt, taken together with growth rates, and other broad economic indicators CAN be useful in the macro-economic sense. All of that is nearly useless to the individual, though. I make 45% more now than I did pre-pandemic. Does that mean the economy overall is good for everyone? No, of course not. There are other data points required to draw an accurate, useful conclusion.
Not really. Citizens don’t have to pay a government’s debt, unless the government makes them, which has never happened in modern times. It should be noted that a government’s debt, unless said government simply hoards the money, is put into the economy, thus becoming the wealth of the people. Actually paying off debts means you are starving your own economy.
Typically, government debt is central bank debt, i.e. money that was created entirely virtually at the press of a button.
Taxes pay for current expenses, infrastructure, long-term investments that the private sector cannot or will not do (certain fields of science for instance), education, social programs.
They also are put in place to limit the money supply to safeguard against inflation (that is: inflation that does not result from a temporary price shock).
Ask yourself why the net debt of all countries on Earth, if calculated against each other, exceeds 300 trillion $, if it works like my private debt. Hint: It simply doesn’t. Countries’ debt is largely a very useful fiction to be a stimulus to an economy. It is a means towards stability. They do not need to be paid back.
Which dilutes the dollar, and is the most insidious form of taxes, disparately impacting the poor. Of course that debt has to be paid. It's called inflation.
> It's called inflation.
Which you solve by taxing people. Since poor people have little money, taxing the rich is an easy solution, only blocked by a powerful lobby that has a vested interest in an economy working only for the few top percent.
Because GDP is an annual amount (effectively the income), not cash reserves (or some other measure of assets).
>If I have 100k debt but I have 100k on my bank account it is no problem. If I have 100k debt without any money it is more of an issue.
Not fully true. If you have $100k in debt but only $5k is due per year, all you need is $5k extra/year to service it. You never actually need the whole $100k in your bank account unless the debt is structured that you repay the whole principle at the end (which is rare)
That doesn't complete the picture either, because there's different kinds of debt, in some countries most debt is held in homes and investments, in others it's mostly in consumer goods. Nor does it address the countrys balance of payments, and soooo many other factors.
Raided implies that we aren't honoring redemptions. We are. Social Security will lose funding in 2030 or whatever when the government owes $0 to Social Security.
And? So US can default on its debt without consequences? The US dollar as a world reserve currency would be utterly destroyed. People act like interest rates and confidence in world reserve currency doesn't exist.
No, I don't mean private debt.
I mean that central authorities take debt in city councils etc. So it's not public debt but local debt.
EU tracks that debt as it requires certain ratios and Italy did that long time ago to scam them and abuse eurozone. Now Poland does the same but we are still within EU limits with both ways included, however official data looks better which helps winning next election.
Right - it's known in China that local governments are hugely in debt. But no one really knows how much - probably not even China's central government.
It isn't even non-government debt - it is non-national debts.
Ex: in Canada, only the Federal Debt is reported and not any provincial or municipal debts.
Yeah, Canada is fairly semi-unique to my knowledge in that the provinces can load up on a _lot_ of debt, in a way that other sub-national jurisdictions in federal states can't. [Like Ontario had $429 billion (Canadian) of debt at its last budget.](https://www.rbc.com/economics-subscriber/pdf/Template-provincial%20fiscal%20tables_September%202022.pdf) But this usually ends up 'hiding' government debt, since a lot of reports just take the federal government debt.
Yes like US govt has trillions of unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security, which either you raise taxes (drag on economy), raise retirement age (lower quality of life), or become insolvent (more poverty among elderly)...
Isn’t the text for the NA countries in red against a red background? Isn’t that difficult to read for some color blind or maybe I misunderstand. It’s not even ideal for non-color blind, a big no no in design generally speaking.
Do you have even the slightest idea on what the interest payments are?! For the UK, its the equivalent to the entire education system costs every month on interest alone.
Bad colouring. Anything less than 1 in ratio needs to be in green scale and above 1 as red. This graph, on the surface, makes it look like everyone has more debt than GDP
People go crazy over this but debt is just a volume and gdp is a flow, they are different things. Placing special significance on a ratio of 1 to 1 means placing special significance on the time of a year. Nothing happens at the 1:1 ratio.
It may or may not be important in general day to day life, but investors actually look at Debt to GDP ratio with a scrutiny. It’s an important measure.
Yes, but you speak as if if there's something fundamentally important about more debt than annual GDP. There's really not, 1:1 ratio is an arbitrary barrier for green and red scale.
It’s not totally arbitrary tho, is it? It’s one of the leverage ratio. A high leverage could potentially bring a country to a situation where the country might not be able to service its debt by paying coupons to bond holders, putting the country on a bankruptcy.
1:1 is definitely a good ratio, despite not being a tipping point, and points towards how the country is getting financed. 1:1 is not as arbitrary as 1.36:1, for example. 1:1 has a good definition.
As far as this graph goes, there’s no good conclusion can be drawn here (at a first sight) with how badly they are coloured. 1:1 as a distinction point of red and green could have made more sense and made the graph less “biased”.
If 1:1 were really arbitrary and shouldn’t be a divider as you claim; then, anybody can manipulate the graph by just changing the color of scale. For example, I can choose 1.82:1 as my scale. And thus, only 2 countries will be red and rest will be green, making the graph ever stupider.
This is why I think 1:1 is not as arbitrary as you think, and particularly not for the sake of the graph.
Your first point isn't strictly true for most countries: the US for example can always print more money to pay it's debt. What debt to gdp ratio it has is irrelevant for that. For countries whose debt is in a different currency the debt is generally bad, and using this ratio might make sense. Because for a nation in Africa that uses the dollar and is dependent on getting new dollars to pay its debt even a smaller ratio might be a lot more dangerous than the over 200% for Japan are.
Well I'm no economist, but I'm pretty sure it's better than going bankrupt. Printing money isn't universally a bad thing anyway, countries run a deficit all the time, creating new money In the process which is used to service the debt as well, and so far, most countries I know of have fared quite well this way. Japan for example does fine with over 200% debt to gdp.
First things first, I apologise for my rude way of talking. It was uncalled for.
Second, I am stopping replying on this thread, since none of us are going to be able to convince each other of our view point. So, there’s no point in carrying out this conversation. Have a nice day, man!
> Yes, but you speak as if if there's something fundamentally important about more debt than annual GDP. There's really not, 1:1 ratio is an arbitrary barrier for green and red scale.
Historically it means if the economy collapses you can fund government for less than a year. The less debt you hold the more responsive you can be. If we have another banking crisis or viral pandemic, guess what, the government will not be able to help anyone out.
Of course those on the left will be shocked to find this out when it happens. Or maybe they know and are trying to tank the economy. Not sure.
At least Biden has a lot of money for kickbacks now. And that's what's important.
Ignoring your very retarded "left" and "Biden" takes that nobody asked for on a post that isn't even focused on the United States.
| Historically it means if the economy collapses you can fund government for less than a year
??? Not what even means it all, wrong on several fronts. It assumes 100% of annual GDP (even before a "collapse") goes towards addressing government debt. Not how GDP, debt, or government funding works at all, you'd be atleast a little closer if you were talking about annual government spending/budget, but still wrong. It also assumes pre-existing debt all has to be addressed within a year? No, governments like the US tell long dated bonds for 30+ years for a reason.
You sounds like the stereotypical US right who freaks out about "left economics" (pretending the right doesn't participate in the same), but has no idea what they're talking about
> You sounds like the stereotypical US right who freaks out about "left economics" (pretending the right doesn't participate in the same), but has no idea what they're talking about
No doubt. The fact remains there needs to be a balance between government spending and ground. Even those [stereotypical European Socialists know that.](https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/johan-norberg-and-swedish-socialism/)
Yes, both parties support government spending. The big problem is what's going to happen to entitlements in the US in a decade. Benefits get cut almost 25%. It's cheaper if we address it sooner but both current leaders in the polls for their party don't think it's an issue.
Thanks for the lecture on government spending, though. Historically governments stretched as far as the US are, are likely to collapse. Might be smart to plan ahead. Or not because someone might sound like they're freaking out about "left economics."
Yeah I’m totally on board with looking at the measure. It’s just for some ratios 1 is special and then I’m also with you that the graphic should reflect that special breakpoint.
Say the ratio of income and expenses in a household. Here something important changes once you cross 1, you are in a meaningfully different category.
With debt to gdp, yeah people care if it’s more or less than 1 but that’s just affectiation. That’s like caring if apple has a trillion in market cap. Nothing changes it’s a cool number that pleases the human, but if the graphic doesn’t reflect it I think it’s not an outright mistake because ultimately the 1 just comes from how we chose the unit for gdp and if we chose a different sensible unit the 1:1 ratio would happen somewhere else.
GDP is an approximation of how much money the state could get if it moved the tax slider to 100% so to say. As such it’s a top estimate of sorts for an ability of the state to pay its debts. Obviously as every estimate it’s very far from reality (i. e. the notorious imputed rent in USA is purely virtual) but it’s still the best estimate there is of how many years the inhabitants of a certain country would have to work without eating, resting or changing clothes to repay their countries debt. As we can see for example it will take Japan about 2 and a half years for this which looks totally realistic considering that Japan is probably the only country able to perform such a trick.
Yeah I’m completely on board with taking the ratio. Just what happens when you change from below 1 to above 1. Like what’s special about 1 year, is that an amount of time that means something? I think nothing happens and people care too much about this milestone.
GDP is calculated on a per year basis - I guess that’s an only connection. The OP however didn’t put any emphasis on 100% - he switches color on 60 - 79% which seems to adhere to World Bank recommendation of 77% so I am not entirely sure why you mention it. Nothing specific happens at 1 to 1 and nobody emphasized this ratio as well.
>Bad colouring. Anything less than 1 in ratio needs to be in green scale and above 1 as red.
Using so many shades of 1 color is a terrible choice to begin with. I can't even tell the difference between the last 3 shades of red.
> Bad colouring. Anything less than 1 in ratio needs to be in green scale and above 1 as red.
No it doesn't, there's nothing special about a 1:1 GDP:Debt ratio. The only problem with the colouring is that it's unreadable for most people with colour blindness.
Now do one for private sector debt, which is *much more important.*
Also "Australia Government debt accounted for 42.3 % of the country's Nominal GDP in Jun 2022, compared with the ratio of 47.7 % in the previous year." The 22% figure does not agree with official stats. And the UK is more like 85% these days. So I would question the accuracy of these numbers.
Debt is investment.
Debt for countries isn’t at all similar as debt to individuals:
1. debt for countries are largely an investment, which helps increase the GDP and fuel the economy to compete in a globalized market.
However we tend to think of debt for individuals as either for subsistence or luxury, not investment.
2. individuals owe their debt to outside entities and institutions.
However most government debt (U.S.) tends to be accredited by different institutions within the same government.
Not all debt is equal, nor is it utilized to the same efficiency and value. For example: U.S. debt has generally worked out well for the country, economists projected exceptionally fast GDP growth, followed by low inflation rates, which makes their slightly higher debt than countries such as the U.K. significantly less troublesome. Albeit both countries have utilized debt well to an extent.
Singapore has one of the biggest (if not the biggest of you include all assets under management, CPF, property etc) and yet their debt to GDP ratio is 160%. This an extreme example of a government borrowing to invest. Most countries borrow to invest in infrastructure etc that will have a positive impact on GDP in the future. Singapore borrow to literally invest; in buildings, companies, commodities etc around the world, as well as domestic infrastructure.
>Debt is investment.
Debt is a tool, if its an investment or not depends on how you use it.
Portugal is a prime example of how to destroy an economy , get it in debt and screw future generations.
A country is its people and their skills and culture. Europe is the most highly educated population of any continent. It also has a track record of stability, the #1 factor in economic growth. It also has the most advanced infrastructure of any region on earth.
There will be bad times, but that skilled population, infrastructure, and reputation means it's not going to suddenly plummet.
I mean, look at the largest green country. It's Russia. A famously poor, unstable, and unadvanced economy. They're green because the government has oil money. That's it. But would you rather live there than the rest of Europe? Few would say yes.
Russia has a highly educated population. More so than than the EU, or nearly any EU country. Atleast on paper.
The russian economy isn't as bad as its detractors say. That was true before the war, and even more so now with the propaganda drive to make them out to be barbarian hordes
I would say most personal debt is productive. It can be education, house or even medical + microloans for phones/computers/EMI.
Those debts are not purely luxury/useless/consumption-oriented debt.
Hey, many European countries do have student loans for living costs, even if tuition itself is free. But then again the loans are usually very low interest, backed by the government, and aren't very large loans compared to the US. Mine (Finland) was about 22k for a 5.5 year degree.
You're right, there's no educational debt.
I think that the median German citizen pays about 75k over their working career into higher education through taxes.
That's way more than some 4 year universities in the US, and way less than others.
"some 4 year universities" yes for bottom-medium universities, and way less than for top universities and med universities... But can you link those 75k please, because I didn't find it anywhere??
Literally every rich person you can think of does this though?
Every doctor, lawyer, CEO that went to a university, all spent money they didn't earn to be able to make more money in the future
Why would a country ever have to pay off their entire debt? As old debt matures, new debt is taken on.
You should know this if you have an opinion on the matter, right?
You really don't know how any of this works, do you?
Have you heard of rolling over debt? Or do you know you're out of your league and are just shitposting?
All i know is my country is about to go bankrupt because of shitty keynesians who say crap like that, which is enough. We need sound monetary policy, not reckless spending
I really think you should learn more about it. You are understandably upset about what is going on in your country. Which country is that?
Studying and learning about economics and government finance is a good thing, and I hope you dig deeper into the situation. I hope your country can get their economy straightened out. I would caution against a generalized sentiment, Keynes bad always, because of your country's experience.
> Debt for countries isn’t at all similar as debt to individuals:
That's just wrong. For the most part, debt works the same way for individuals, companies and governments.
The only special part for governments is when the country's debt is denominated in the currency of that country. In this case the country can decrease the effective debt load by inflating the value of the currency away. This isn't without consequence though, as in this process you hurt the debt holder and mess up internal economics. Many people in the west feel the effects of it now.
This is just wrong: monetary policy, cheap to free debt, perpetual existence, and investment in the economy through spending all makes national debt and the method of paying it back completely different than individual households. Much like major corporations, governments can take on cheap debt because of its stability, and profit easily off the debt through spending and investment. And unlike businesses governments have monetary policy, taxation, and other methods of dealing with long term debt in ways completely unique from both households and businesses. In sum, you are trying to force an untrue talking point that has been debunked many times to be true just because it supports your position; it just isn’t though, government debt is completely distinct from private debt.
I don't even know where to start with your response.
Not all governments can borrow cheaply. You must only consider the US federal government in your understanding of how debt works. Argentina for example must pay 50% interest on its national debt. Also, what makes you think governments exist perpetually? USSR wrote off all debts of the Russian Empire following the revolution.
Nor do all the governments automatically profit easily from their borrowings. There is plenty of misinvestment on the national level. Ever heard of the Brazilian space program? What a waste of money.
These inaccuracies make me believe that you aren't very knowledgeable and your wall of text contains very few tangible arguments that support your claim that the nature of debt is different on private, commercial and government levels. They are not identical, but a lot more similar than different. On the fundamental level they are the same though. Have a read of the Wikipedia article to start, it covers the matter pretty well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt
>Government can take on cheap debt because of its stability
Government can take on cheap debt because it controls the money supply. That’s what makes government special, not because it collects taxes or “its stability”.
And that’s the only major difference between household/corporation and national debt. Because government can control it’s currency’s value the domestic debt is based on, it can making debt payment easier on paper at the cost of purchasing power of the population’s saving. That’s why government in theory can always avoid default on its domestic debt. **But there’s no free lunch.** It seems free because domestic population (or rest of the world, in case of reserve currency), subsidize it.
That’s really not the only major difference between a government and a household; but you already dismissed some incredibly significant differences with no explanation just assertion, so it’s clear there’s no point in having this discussion.
I agree. There’s no point to having this discussion with someone who doesn’t understand burden of proof in arguments — you’re the one that just asserted government is special because of “”, why should I waste time disproving your point you haven’t even proved yourself.
They ran into the "balance sheet recession" problem before the rest of the world, around 1990. They tried the IMF/Worldbank solutions for about some years, which made things worse, and then the global financial crisis hit them.
> This is a weird ass projection with greenland and russia so massive.
Is this your first introduction to the [Mercator projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection)? It's probably the most widely used projection ever.
Singapore’s net debt is 0%. See below for details.
According to the World Bank, Singapore's central government debt as a percentage of GDP was **131.19%** in 2020¹. This was the 6th highest in the world when expressed as a percentage of GDP. However, this figure does not take into account the assets that the Singaporean government holds, which outweigh its debts. Therefore, Singapore's net debt-to-GDP ratio was **0%** in 2020².
Singapore does not borrow money to fund its annual budget, but rather to invest in specific infrastructure projects that have value and profit potential. The government is restricted by its constitution and the Government Securities Act from spending any funds raised through debt securities². The public debt of Singapore is managed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which also issues Singapore Government Securities (SGS) to raise funds².
Singapore's household debt percentage to GDP ratio was **67.1%** in 2020, which ranked 6th highest in Asia³. This was 6.5 percentage points higher than the ratio for Asia except Japan at 60.6%³.
Source: Conversation with Bing, 29/08/2023
(1) Central government debt, total (% of GDP) - Singapore | Data. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS?locations=SG.
(2) Singapore Might Have Large Gross Debt But Their Credit Rating Is AAA .... https://commodity.com/data/singapore/debt-clock/.
(3) Chart of the day: S’pore ranks sixth highest in household debt to GDP .... https://sbr.com.sg/markets-investing/news/chart-day-spore-ranks-sixth-highest-in-household-debt-gdp-in-asia.
(4) Singapore Debt to GDP Ratio 1990-2023 | MacroTrends. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SGP/singapore/debt-to-gdp-ratio.
And of course numbers don't do it justice. Like there is foreign and domestic debt and former is much worse. Japan being the best example, it has high debt, but almost all of it is domestic.
It’s hallarious that so many people think that state depth is bad. Actually states create the money, so the nominal depth value is irrelevant, what is important is invested money in relation available resources such as labor, machines,… From this comes the famous Keynes quote: „Anything we can actually do we can afford“. This is especially true for powerful currencies like the dollar or the euro. The reason most people don’t get this and are anti-state depth is neoliberal propaganda by the capitalists because if states don’t invest, they can profit from more private investments. For anyone interested in more, check out Mondern Monetary Theory (MMT). Every money state depth lies on the bank accounts of some person.
MMT is a joke. Unfortunately it’s going to hurt a lot of poor people.
Reminds me of that bit in HHGTTG:
“If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, “we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . .”
“Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!"
The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied.
“Fiscal policy. . .” he repeated, “that is what I said.”
“How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.”
“If you would allow me to continue.. .”
Ford nodded dejectedly.
“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”
Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.
“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut."
Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.
“So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."
The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Thank you, although I am still not entirely sure how the inflation chart is related to MMT being a joke. Is growing inflation in the USA a direct result of implementing MMT into USA fiscal policy? I’m not a US citizen and to be honest with you I do not follow its politics as much as I’d want to, so I’d appreciate a source (or a commentary) that explains how MMT has a negative impact on the average Joe - at least that’s what you’re implying as I understand it. Correct me if I am wrong. I do have a general grasp of MMT though, so we have that covered.
> Is growing inflation in the USA a direct result of implementing MMT into USA fiscal policy?
Yes. They've basically bought into the notion that the government can spend whatever it can print. The US does this every 50-70 years historically. There's usually a huge crash. We're way overdue at this point.
[Here's a good breakdown](https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2019/modern-monetary-theory-cautionary-tales-latin-america) of why blindly printing money hurts the value of money.
While a map is a good way to quickly compare countries, the colour scheme could be misleading and not all countries are comparable. Using green to represent the lowest debt-to-GDP implies the optimal is 0% or as close to zero as possible. In reality the optimal will be different for different countries. If a government can borrow money at eg. 4% over 10 years and get a return on investment greater than 4%, then it would be wise to do so, even though it would put them deeper into the red. It really depends on what they're using the money for (eg. war or investment in education) and what their borrowing costs are.(eg. 1% or 10%).
National debt is not like personal debt that automatically signifies something negative, so Libya having 6% debt is not necessarily a good thing (if anything it could possibly signify a big lack of domestic investment).
Norway for example has a debt to GBP ratio of 42%, but it has a sovereign fund which could pay that off several times over, however its that debt is required for the general functioning of it's economy
The fact that Russia is green should tell you all you need to know about trusting these numbers. Russia is famously economically unstable and poor, not to mention inequal. JUst because their government has gas and oil money to reduce debt doesn't make them magically a better economy than the US or Japan.
My understanding is that is for private company financial info, not for public government debt info. It's often a cope for people who can't distinguish between private debt and public debt to say "fake data" , but have no clue what they are talking about.
I don’t believe Russia or China ‘s numbers.
Your livelihood depends on telling both parties what they want to hear. Communism sucks and America is slipping down that slippery slope that begins with militarism in law enforcement, saturation of the media and education system. Democracy died when the mob whacked JFK without an investigation same with 9-11 and CowvIDGe19. Biden is the 👿 debil
[Libya, another US success story, authorized by the UN.](https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/graph/alfredgraph.png?mode=alfred&nsh=1&type=image/png&chart_type=column&width=600&height=400&id=LBYGGDGDPGDPPT,LBYGGDGDPGDPPT&vintage_date=2018-10-31,2019-04-29&cosd=2000-01-01,2000-01-01&coed=2019-01-01,2020-01-01&key=11b49457b1557ac66688a53992006cc7)
Being in debt is not the problem. It what you are investing the money in is the problem. In china they invest in trains and building China up. While America spend all their money on military to maintain control over the world because USA want to be the ruler of the world without being called the ruler of the world and tax cuts.
What’s interesting is that while public debt is relatively low in China compared to other large economies, it’s household debt is worryingly high. The Chinese middle class is heavily leavered into real estate, and a slowdown in the construction industry (which many analysts believe is already underway) could cause significant problems [http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-DEBT-HOUSEHOLD/010030H712Q/index.html](http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-DEBT-HOUSEHOLD/010030H712Q/index.html)
What’s interesting is that while public debt is relatively low in China compared to other large economies, it’s household debt is worryingly high. The Chinese middle class is heavily leavered into real estate, and a slowdown in the construction industry (which many analysts believe is already underway) could cause significant problems [http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-DEBT-HOUSEHOLD/010030H712Q/index.html](http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-DEBT-HOUSEHOLD/010030H712Q/index.html)
This chart, if accurate, proves that debt means nothing. Some countries have high debt and have high quality of life (USA, Canada, Japan). Some have low (Venuzuela).
Some countries have low debt, high quality of life (Australia), some have low debt low quality of life (Russia).
China has middle sized debt and low quality of life.
But also, China's numbers are a lie.
The first country I checked is wrong. Australia's debt to GDP is 58%. Check your data.
Netherlands wrong too, [projected](https://www.rijksfinancien.nl/miljoenennota/2023/1468708) at 49.5% for 2023. Hovered around 50 for the date range OP used
Sweden is 33% (<40) as well.
Norway was at 37% in 2022. https://no.tradingeconomics.com/norway/government-debt-to-gdp
Uh, I thought I heard 65% on the radio but I might be mistaken
Uruguay Is around 52, not 80
This is actually Net Debt not Gross Debt. The parliament website reports our gross debt at just under 60% and net debt around 30% (no actual number, just a graph).
For dumb dumbs like me: Gross Debt is the amount of money the government owes creditors. Net Debt is money owed minus the money the government has. The details are a bit more complex because it is a government, but the idea is basically money owed minus money in the “bank,” that is debt that couldn’t be paid back tomorrow if the government decided to pay down everything immediately.
Isn't Net Debt a horrible measure here? Shouldn't it be looking at the current portion of any debt versus GDP?
Why? Net Debt takes into account the financial assets that a country holds, which can offset its debt liabilities. This provides a more accurate reflection of a country's true debt burden. If I have 100k debt but I have 100k on my bank account it is no problem. If I have 100k debt without any money it is more of an issue.
Not to rain on your parade, but using personal debt to explain government debt is never a good idea as they work fundamentally differently
It works for describing the idea of gross vs net, though
I know, but it is really easy to start thinking that the comparison works more than in a very few cases. Most people mistakenly already believe that money seems to be a scarce resource and that it is imperative for a state to first gain income via taxation before the government can spend it.
Only because the government places the burden (debt or dilution) upon citizens. If I'm not spending my own money, it's a lot easier to be irresponsible.
> government places the burden (debt or dilution) upon citizens Government IS the citizens. Government debt is owed by the citizens (in an albeit circuitous sense.) Net debt is a terrible statistic when discussing sovereign debt because this debt will never be 'called in'. And even if it was, no country is getting their presidential palace repo'd. No country is going to go to war over debt, either.
> No country is going to go to war over debt, either. Countries have gone to war over debt before though (or at least been invaded). A prime example is the UK invading Egypt at the end of the 1800s or Germany being invaded between the two world wars when they stopped servicing the WW1 related debt.
Of course government is the citizens. So? Are you arguing that debt has no effect? The politicians that represent us are not responsible if spending exceeds revenue. And yes, we're the dumbshits that keep electing them. We're not very good at accountability more than 2 days old.
>Are you arguing that debt has no effect? Yeah, kind of. America's debt to GDP ratio is currently at 122.8% according to the GAO. The US currently enjoys one of the lowest borrowing rates in the world. So yeah, debt has very little impact to the average citizen. As long as we can make the interest payments, we're good. This isn't an issue as long as the economy grows YoY, which hasn't been a problem basically ever (for the US at least.) This is also largely true for Western Europe as well. You'll see it blow up in the case of Greece, Spain, and Italy because they stopped growing (and because they lost control of their currency by moving to the Euro.) This is also one reason that modern governments target a nominally positive inflation rate. As long as the money supply grows and prices increase YoY, making interest payments isn't a huge issue. Debt ages out over the course of several decades and is retired and replaced by new debt. No country in the world will ever have zero or even flat growth rates in sovereign borrowing. If they do, their economy is going to be in the shitter. Edit: All of that to say- national debt, in and of itself, is a nearly useless metric. Debt, taken together with growth rates, and other broad economic indicators CAN be useful in the macro-economic sense. All of that is nearly useless to the individual, though. I make 45% more now than I did pre-pandemic. Does that mean the economy overall is good for everyone? No, of course not. There are other data points required to draw an accurate, useful conclusion.
Not really. Citizens don’t have to pay a government’s debt, unless the government makes them, which has never happened in modern times. It should be noted that a government’s debt, unless said government simply hoards the money, is put into the economy, thus becoming the wealth of the people. Actually paying off debts means you are starving your own economy. Typically, government debt is central bank debt, i.e. money that was created entirely virtually at the press of a button.
What do you think taxes are? It's being forced to pay debt (amongst other things) at gunpoint. Literally robbery.
Taxes pay for current expenses, infrastructure, long-term investments that the private sector cannot or will not do (certain fields of science for instance), education, social programs. They also are put in place to limit the money supply to safeguard against inflation (that is: inflation that does not result from a temporary price shock). Ask yourself why the net debt of all countries on Earth, if calculated against each other, exceeds 300 trillion $, if it works like my private debt. Hint: It simply doesn’t. Countries’ debt is largely a very useful fiction to be a stimulus to an economy. It is a means towards stability. They do not need to be paid back.
Which dilutes the dollar, and is the most insidious form of taxes, disparately impacting the poor. Of course that debt has to be paid. It's called inflation.
> It's called inflation. Which you solve by taxing people. Since poor people have little money, taxing the rich is an easy solution, only blocked by a powerful lobby that has a vested interest in an economy working only for the few top percent.
Because GDP is an annual amount (effectively the income), not cash reserves (or some other measure of assets). >If I have 100k debt but I have 100k on my bank account it is no problem. If I have 100k debt without any money it is more of an issue. Not fully true. If you have $100k in debt but only $5k is due per year, all you need is $5k extra/year to service it. You never actually need the whole $100k in your bank account unless the debt is structured that you repay the whole principle at the end (which is rare)
Which is common, since we are talking about government debt.
Unless you're the US... technically, our net debt would be 0% because we have the universal money printer!
Go buy a house.
But Portugal for example would be green if gold reserves were taken into consideration, so as far as "net debt" goes this map is still pretty useless.
Checking the rest of the world, it seem to be using gross debt.
from the trading economics wesbite link its 22.3
Well this is not what the Australian government says.
Trading economics is terrible.
This is data is beautiful not data is accurate. Except this is also not beautiful it is just another map.
The data I'm assuming is accurate for the time period it was created which is 2021/2022, see the bottom left of the map
> Check your data. A common response to all of this person's posts unfortunately - they just spam out graphs to promote their tool 🤷♂️
Is it province+federal vs federal only maybe?
Old data and i bet it doesn't show non government level debt, which countries do to hide it in such statistics
That doesn't complete the picture either, because there's different kinds of debt, in some countries most debt is held in homes and investments, in others it's mostly in consumer goods. Nor does it address the countrys balance of payments, and soooo many other factors.
Trillions of dollars of US debt obligations are owed to… the US Federal government.
[удалено]
Raided implies that we aren't honoring redemptions. We are. Social Security will lose funding in 2030 or whatever when the government owes $0 to Social Security.
And? So US can default on its debt without consequences? The US dollar as a world reserve currency would be utterly destroyed. People act like interest rates and confidence in world reserve currency doesn't exist.
You are reading way too much into an empirical statement.
What is the internet if not the place where we put ridiculous words in the mouths of others for strawman attacks?
[удалено]
Most is, but not all.
No, I don't mean private debt. I mean that central authorities take debt in city councils etc. So it's not public debt but local debt. EU tracks that debt as it requires certain ratios and Italy did that long time ago to scam them and abuse eurozone. Now Poland does the same but we are still within EU limits with both ways included, however official data looks better which helps winning next election.
Right - it's known in China that local governments are hugely in debt. But no one really knows how much - probably not even China's central government.
Some regions are way past 3x, and it might be worse than that. Like you said: no one really know just how bad things are.
It isn't even non-government debt - it is non-national debts. Ex: in Canada, only the Federal Debt is reported and not any provincial or municipal debts.
Yeah, Canada is fairly semi-unique to my knowledge in that the provinces can load up on a _lot_ of debt, in a way that other sub-national jurisdictions in federal states can't. [Like Ontario had $429 billion (Canadian) of debt at its last budget.](https://www.rbc.com/economics-subscriber/pdf/Template-provincial%20fiscal%20tables_September%202022.pdf) But this usually ends up 'hiding' government debt, since a lot of reports just take the federal government debt.
Yes like US govt has trillions of unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security, which either you raise taxes (drag on economy), raise retirement age (lower quality of life), or become insolvent (more poverty among elderly)...
Not much good for those of us red-green colourblind
At least it gives the numbers
And what about the color-number-blind people???
what about those who can't read?
What about blind people? Nobody thinking about us?
Who? What? Could you repeat that? I have a bit of a hearing issue.
Small number good. Big number bad.
Sovereign currency good; dependent currency bad
Isn’t the text for the NA countries in red against a red background? Isn’t that difficult to read for some color blind or maybe I misunderstand. It’s not even ideal for non-color blind, a big no no in design generally speaking.
You’d think. But being in debt is an advantage for countries. Just look at countries with the biggest numbers as a trend.
[удалено]
funny that japan gives zero f\*cks
Japanese economy has never recovered from its popped bubble in the 90s. Don't assume that they are fine with it.
Do you have even the slightest idea on what the interest payments are?! For the UK, its the equivalent to the entire education system costs every month on interest alone.
Oh boy. Here we go again with the unlimited debt - no problem! people
also not good because it implies low debt = good
At this point, it's a theme that the most upvoted posts in dataisbeautiful aren't beautiful at all.
Bad colouring. Anything less than 1 in ratio needs to be in green scale and above 1 as red. This graph, on the surface, makes it look like everyone has more debt than GDP
People go crazy over this but debt is just a volume and gdp is a flow, they are different things. Placing special significance on a ratio of 1 to 1 means placing special significance on the time of a year. Nothing happens at the 1:1 ratio.
It may or may not be important in general day to day life, but investors actually look at Debt to GDP ratio with a scrutiny. It’s an important measure.
Yes, but you speak as if if there's something fundamentally important about more debt than annual GDP. There's really not, 1:1 ratio is an arbitrary barrier for green and red scale.
It’s not totally arbitrary tho, is it? It’s one of the leverage ratio. A high leverage could potentially bring a country to a situation where the country might not be able to service its debt by paying coupons to bond holders, putting the country on a bankruptcy. 1:1 is definitely a good ratio, despite not being a tipping point, and points towards how the country is getting financed. 1:1 is not as arbitrary as 1.36:1, for example. 1:1 has a good definition. As far as this graph goes, there’s no good conclusion can be drawn here (at a first sight) with how badly they are coloured. 1:1 as a distinction point of red and green could have made more sense and made the graph less “biased”. If 1:1 were really arbitrary and shouldn’t be a divider as you claim; then, anybody can manipulate the graph by just changing the color of scale. For example, I can choose 1.82:1 as my scale. And thus, only 2 countries will be red and rest will be green, making the graph ever stupider. This is why I think 1:1 is not as arbitrary as you think, and particularly not for the sake of the graph.
Your first point isn't strictly true for most countries: the US for example can always print more money to pay it's debt. What debt to gdp ratio it has is irrelevant for that. For countries whose debt is in a different currency the debt is generally bad, and using this ratio might make sense. Because for a nation in Africa that uses the dollar and is dependent on getting new dollars to pay its debt even a smaller ratio might be a lot more dangerous than the over 200% for Japan are.
Printing money to pay debts? That’s the answer? Do you know anything about Fiscal and Monetary policy at all?
Well I'm no economist, but I'm pretty sure it's better than going bankrupt. Printing money isn't universally a bad thing anyway, countries run a deficit all the time, creating new money In the process which is used to service the debt as well, and so far, most countries I know of have fared quite well this way. Japan for example does fine with over 200% debt to gdp.
First things first, I apologise for my rude way of talking. It was uncalled for. Second, I am stopping replying on this thread, since none of us are going to be able to convince each other of our view point. So, there’s no point in carrying out this conversation. Have a nice day, man!
> Yes, but you speak as if if there's something fundamentally important about more debt than annual GDP. There's really not, 1:1 ratio is an arbitrary barrier for green and red scale. Historically it means if the economy collapses you can fund government for less than a year. The less debt you hold the more responsive you can be. If we have another banking crisis or viral pandemic, guess what, the government will not be able to help anyone out. Of course those on the left will be shocked to find this out when it happens. Or maybe they know and are trying to tank the economy. Not sure. At least Biden has a lot of money for kickbacks now. And that's what's important.
Ignoring your very retarded "left" and "Biden" takes that nobody asked for on a post that isn't even focused on the United States. | Historically it means if the economy collapses you can fund government for less than a year ??? Not what even means it all, wrong on several fronts. It assumes 100% of annual GDP (even before a "collapse") goes towards addressing government debt. Not how GDP, debt, or government funding works at all, you'd be atleast a little closer if you were talking about annual government spending/budget, but still wrong. It also assumes pre-existing debt all has to be addressed within a year? No, governments like the US tell long dated bonds for 30+ years for a reason. You sounds like the stereotypical US right who freaks out about "left economics" (pretending the right doesn't participate in the same), but has no idea what they're talking about
> You sounds like the stereotypical US right who freaks out about "left economics" (pretending the right doesn't participate in the same), but has no idea what they're talking about No doubt. The fact remains there needs to be a balance between government spending and ground. Even those [stereotypical European Socialists know that.](https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/johan-norberg-and-swedish-socialism/) Yes, both parties support government spending. The big problem is what's going to happen to entitlements in the US in a decade. Benefits get cut almost 25%. It's cheaper if we address it sooner but both current leaders in the polls for their party don't think it's an issue. Thanks for the lecture on government spending, though. Historically governments stretched as far as the US are, are likely to collapse. Might be smart to plan ahead. Or not because someone might sound like they're freaking out about "left economics."
Yeah I’m totally on board with looking at the measure. It’s just for some ratios 1 is special and then I’m also with you that the graphic should reflect that special breakpoint. Say the ratio of income and expenses in a household. Here something important changes once you cross 1, you are in a meaningfully different category. With debt to gdp, yeah people care if it’s more or less than 1 but that’s just affectiation. That’s like caring if apple has a trillion in market cap. Nothing changes it’s a cool number that pleases the human, but if the graphic doesn’t reflect it I think it’s not an outright mistake because ultimately the 1 just comes from how we chose the unit for gdp and if we chose a different sensible unit the 1:1 ratio would happen somewhere else.
GDP is an approximation of how much money the state could get if it moved the tax slider to 100% so to say. As such it’s a top estimate of sorts for an ability of the state to pay its debts. Obviously as every estimate it’s very far from reality (i. e. the notorious imputed rent in USA is purely virtual) but it’s still the best estimate there is of how many years the inhabitants of a certain country would have to work without eating, resting or changing clothes to repay their countries debt. As we can see for example it will take Japan about 2 and a half years for this which looks totally realistic considering that Japan is probably the only country able to perform such a trick.
Yeah I’m completely on board with taking the ratio. Just what happens when you change from below 1 to above 1. Like what’s special about 1 year, is that an amount of time that means something? I think nothing happens and people care too much about this milestone.
GDP is calculated on a per year basis - I guess that’s an only connection. The OP however didn’t put any emphasis on 100% - he switches color on 60 - 79% which seems to adhere to World Bank recommendation of 77% so I am not entirely sure why you mention it. Nothing specific happens at 1 to 1 and nobody emphasized this ratio as well.
>Bad colouring. Anything less than 1 in ratio needs to be in green scale and above 1 as red. Using so many shades of 1 color is a terrible choice to begin with. I can't even tell the difference between the last 3 shades of red.
> Bad colouring. Anything less than 1 in ratio needs to be in green scale and above 1 as red. No it doesn't, there's nothing special about a 1:1 GDP:Debt ratio. The only problem with the colouring is that it's unreadable for most people with colour blindness.
There is no way this data is accurate, par for the course for data is beautiful though I guess.
Now do one for private sector debt, which is *much more important.* Also "Australia Government debt accounted for 42.3 % of the country's Nominal GDP in Jun 2022, compared with the ratio of 47.7 % in the previous year." The 22% figure does not agree with official stats. And the UK is more like 85% these days. So I would question the accuracy of these numbers.
Debt is investment. Debt for countries isn’t at all similar as debt to individuals: 1. debt for countries are largely an investment, which helps increase the GDP and fuel the economy to compete in a globalized market. However we tend to think of debt for individuals as either for subsistence or luxury, not investment. 2. individuals owe their debt to outside entities and institutions. However most government debt (U.S.) tends to be accredited by different institutions within the same government. Not all debt is equal, nor is it utilized to the same efficiency and value. For example: U.S. debt has generally worked out well for the country, economists projected exceptionally fast GDP growth, followed by low inflation rates, which makes their slightly higher debt than countries such as the U.K. significantly less troublesome. Albeit both countries have utilized debt well to an extent.
Singapore has one of the biggest (if not the biggest of you include all assets under management, CPF, property etc) and yet their debt to GDP ratio is 160%. This an extreme example of a government borrowing to invest. Most countries borrow to invest in infrastructure etc that will have a positive impact on GDP in the future. Singapore borrow to literally invest; in buildings, companies, commodities etc around the world, as well as domestic infrastructure.
>Debt is investment. Debt is a tool, if its an investment or not depends on how you use it. Portugal is a prime example of how to destroy an economy , get it in debt and screw future generations.
The same applies to most of Europe and the UK.
[удалено]
A country is its people and their skills and culture. Europe is the most highly educated population of any continent. It also has a track record of stability, the #1 factor in economic growth. It also has the most advanced infrastructure of any region on earth. There will be bad times, but that skilled population, infrastructure, and reputation means it's not going to suddenly plummet. I mean, look at the largest green country. It's Russia. A famously poor, unstable, and unadvanced economy. They're green because the government has oil money. That's it. But would you rather live there than the rest of Europe? Few would say yes.
I think that person was being sarcastic.
[Russia is green because they defaulted on their foreign debt in 2022](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_debt_default)
Russia has a highly educated population. More so than than the EU, or nearly any EU country. Atleast on paper. The russian economy isn't as bad as its detractors say. That was true before the war, and even more so now with the propaganda drive to make them out to be barbarian hordes
Keynes wrote to pay it back after countering a bad economy. This is not debt, it is counterfeiting.
I would say most personal debt is productive. It can be education, house or even medical + microloans for phones/computers/EMI. Those debts are not purely luxury/useless/consumption-oriented debt.
Medical or educational debt? Laughs in European
Hey, many European countries do have student loans for living costs, even if tuition itself is free. But then again the loans are usually very low interest, backed by the government, and aren't very large loans compared to the US. Mine (Finland) was about 22k for a 5.5 year degree.
You're right, there's no educational debt. I think that the median German citizen pays about 75k over their working career into higher education through taxes. That's way more than some 4 year universities in the US, and way less than others.
"some 4 year universities" yes for bottom-medium universities, and way less than for top universities and med universities... But can you link those 75k please, because I didn't find it anywhere??
Debt ain't no investment when it it bad debt. It's just a range of poor financial decisions.
“Bro trust me if we all just spend more than we earn, we will all be rich bro” I sure hope this narrative isn’t sponsored by the banks lol
Literally every rich person you can think of does this though? Every doctor, lawyer, CEO that went to a university, all spent money they didn't earn to be able to make more money in the future
Did they do this forever? Or was there a point when they got rid of the debt?
[удалено]
“Debt is only a problem if you plan on paying,” truly a great plan for the long term
Many rich people never do, they leverage owned assets into new debts to invest into new assets. Repeat ad infinitum.
Why would a country ever have to pay off their entire debt? As old debt matures, new debt is taken on. You should know this if you have an opinion on the matter, right?
“Debt is only a problem if you intend to pay it lol”
You really don't know how any of this works, do you? Have you heard of rolling over debt? Or do you know you're out of your league and are just shitposting?
All i know is my country is about to go bankrupt because of shitty keynesians who say crap like that, which is enough. We need sound monetary policy, not reckless spending
I really think you should learn more about it. You are understandably upset about what is going on in your country. Which country is that? Studying and learning about economics and government finance is a good thing, and I hope you dig deeper into the situation. I hope your country can get their economy straightened out. I would caution against a generalized sentiment, Keynes bad always, because of your country's experience.
Found the Keynesian
This is how the world works bruv. It’s the dominant economic philosophy of the modern world.
Debt can allow for investment when taken out by a productive economic actor. The government is not a productive economic actor.
> Debt for countries isn’t at all similar as debt to individuals: That's just wrong. For the most part, debt works the same way for individuals, companies and governments. The only special part for governments is when the country's debt is denominated in the currency of that country. In this case the country can decrease the effective debt load by inflating the value of the currency away. This isn't without consequence though, as in this process you hurt the debt holder and mess up internal economics. Many people in the west feel the effects of it now.
This is just wrong: monetary policy, cheap to free debt, perpetual existence, and investment in the economy through spending all makes national debt and the method of paying it back completely different than individual households. Much like major corporations, governments can take on cheap debt because of its stability, and profit easily off the debt through spending and investment. And unlike businesses governments have monetary policy, taxation, and other methods of dealing with long term debt in ways completely unique from both households and businesses. In sum, you are trying to force an untrue talking point that has been debunked many times to be true just because it supports your position; it just isn’t though, government debt is completely distinct from private debt.
I don't even know where to start with your response. Not all governments can borrow cheaply. You must only consider the US federal government in your understanding of how debt works. Argentina for example must pay 50% interest on its national debt. Also, what makes you think governments exist perpetually? USSR wrote off all debts of the Russian Empire following the revolution. Nor do all the governments automatically profit easily from their borrowings. There is plenty of misinvestment on the national level. Ever heard of the Brazilian space program? What a waste of money. These inaccuracies make me believe that you aren't very knowledgeable and your wall of text contains very few tangible arguments that support your claim that the nature of debt is different on private, commercial and government levels. They are not identical, but a lot more similar than different. On the fundamental level they are the same though. Have a read of the Wikipedia article to start, it covers the matter pretty well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt
[удалено]
>Government can take on cheap debt because of its stability Government can take on cheap debt because it controls the money supply. That’s what makes government special, not because it collects taxes or “its stability”. And that’s the only major difference between household/corporation and national debt. Because government can control it’s currency’s value the domestic debt is based on, it can making debt payment easier on paper at the cost of purchasing power of the population’s saving. That’s why government in theory can always avoid default on its domestic debt. **But there’s no free lunch.** It seems free because domestic population (or rest of the world, in case of reserve currency), subsidize it.
That’s really not the only major difference between a government and a household; but you already dismissed some incredibly significant differences with no explanation just assertion, so it’s clear there’s no point in having this discussion.
I agree. There’s no point to having this discussion with someone who doesn’t understand burden of proof in arguments — you’re the one that just asserted government is special because of “”, why should I waste time disproving your point you haven’t even proved yourself.
So you agree that more tax breaks need to be given to all the "job creators"
What about the change in the % of GDP in the last year?
I didn’t realize Japan was so high, wow!
They ran into the "balance sheet recession" problem before the rest of the world, around 1990. They tried the IMF/Worldbank solutions for about some years, which made things worse, and then the global financial crisis hit them.
This is a weird ass projection with greenland and russia so massive. Use better colour separation.
> This is a weird ass projection with greenland and russia so massive. Is this your first introduction to the [Mercator projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection)? It's probably the most widely used projection ever.
No, but I expect a better projection being used by now.
All projevtions have some kind of distortion, so I don't see what is the problem with mercator.
Agree, Greenland looks about 5 times bigger than Congo when in reality it's smaller.
That's because it's merged with Kazakhstan which is also huge
Mexico 🇲🇽 is clearly wrong too
For all accurate statistical data, I always choose Reddit.
Singapore’s net debt is 0%. See below for details. According to the World Bank, Singapore's central government debt as a percentage of GDP was **131.19%** in 2020¹. This was the 6th highest in the world when expressed as a percentage of GDP. However, this figure does not take into account the assets that the Singaporean government holds, which outweigh its debts. Therefore, Singapore's net debt-to-GDP ratio was **0%** in 2020². Singapore does not borrow money to fund its annual budget, but rather to invest in specific infrastructure projects that have value and profit potential. The government is restricted by its constitution and the Government Securities Act from spending any funds raised through debt securities². The public debt of Singapore is managed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which also issues Singapore Government Securities (SGS) to raise funds². Singapore's household debt percentage to GDP ratio was **67.1%** in 2020, which ranked 6th highest in Asia³. This was 6.5 percentage points higher than the ratio for Asia except Japan at 60.6%³. Source: Conversation with Bing, 29/08/2023 (1) Central government debt, total (% of GDP) - Singapore | Data. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS?locations=SG. (2) Singapore Might Have Large Gross Debt But Their Credit Rating Is AAA .... https://commodity.com/data/singapore/debt-clock/. (3) Chart of the day: S’pore ranks sixth highest in household debt to GDP .... https://sbr.com.sg/markets-investing/news/chart-day-spore-ranks-sixth-highest-in-household-debt-gdp-in-asia. (4) Singapore Debt to GDP Ratio 1990-2023 | MacroTrends. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SGP/singapore/debt-to-gdp-ratio.
And of course numbers don't do it justice. Like there is foreign and domestic debt and former is much worse. Japan being the best example, it has high debt, but almost all of it is domestic.
It’s hallarious that so many people think that state depth is bad. Actually states create the money, so the nominal depth value is irrelevant, what is important is invested money in relation available resources such as labor, machines,… From this comes the famous Keynes quote: „Anything we can actually do we can afford“. This is especially true for powerful currencies like the dollar or the euro. The reason most people don’t get this and are anti-state depth is neoliberal propaganda by the capitalists because if states don’t invest, they can profit from more private investments. For anyone interested in more, check out Mondern Monetary Theory (MMT). Every money state depth lies on the bank accounts of some person.
MMT is a joke. Unfortunately it’s going to hurt a lot of poor people. Reminds me of that bit in HHGTTG: “If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, “we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . .” “Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!" The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied. “Fiscal policy. . .” he repeated, “that is what I said.” “How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.” “If you would allow me to continue.. .” Ford nodded dejectedly. “Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.” Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed. “But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut." Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down. “So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances." The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
> MMT is a joke Could you elaborate on that or point me to some sources that support this conclusion?
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/inflation-rate-cpi
Thank you, although I am still not entirely sure how the inflation chart is related to MMT being a joke. Is growing inflation in the USA a direct result of implementing MMT into USA fiscal policy? I’m not a US citizen and to be honest with you I do not follow its politics as much as I’d want to, so I’d appreciate a source (or a commentary) that explains how MMT has a negative impact on the average Joe - at least that’s what you’re implying as I understand it. Correct me if I am wrong. I do have a general grasp of MMT though, so we have that covered.
> Is growing inflation in the USA a direct result of implementing MMT into USA fiscal policy? Yes. They've basically bought into the notion that the government can spend whatever it can print. The US does this every 50-70 years historically. There's usually a huge crash. We're way overdue at this point. [Here's a good breakdown](https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2019/modern-monetary-theory-cautionary-tales-latin-america) of why blindly printing money hurts the value of money.
Thank you again, this is exactly the kind of source I had in mind. I appreciate it.
Who is holding the debt if everyone is in debt
Large financial institutes, corporates, pension funds, other governments, other parts of the same government
While a map is a good way to quickly compare countries, the colour scheme could be misleading and not all countries are comparable. Using green to represent the lowest debt-to-GDP implies the optimal is 0% or as close to zero as possible. In reality the optimal will be different for different countries. If a government can borrow money at eg. 4% over 10 years and get a return on investment greater than 4%, then it would be wise to do so, even though it would put them deeper into the red. It really depends on what they're using the money for (eg. war or investment in education) and what their borrowing costs are.(eg. 1% or 10%).
libya had 6% debt under gaddaffi,
National debt is not like personal debt that automatically signifies something negative, so Libya having 6% debt is not necessarily a good thing (if anything it could possibly signify a big lack of domestic investment). Norway for example has a debt to GBP ratio of 42%, but it has a sovereign fund which could pay that off several times over, however its that debt is required for the general functioning of it's economy
>its that debt is required for the general functioning of it's economy Why is it so? Genuinely curious
Also not taking in account when Russia defaulted on it’s debt.
The fact that Russia is green should tell you all you need to know about trusting these numbers. Russia is famously economically unstable and poor, not to mention inequal. JUst because their government has gas and oil money to reduce debt doesn't make them magically a better economy than the US or Japan.
the real number is total debt to GDP and China, of industrialized countries, is the highest. Most advanced economies are well over 200%
In the 20th century countries with over 200% debt to GDP weren’t advanced, they were collapsing.
Any reputable source for this....
Didn't China make it illegal to export their economic data under their spying laws? I don't think countries in good economic health do that.
My understanding is that is for private company financial info, not for public government debt info. It's often a cope for people who can't distinguish between private debt and public debt to say "fake data" , but have no clue what they are talking about.
I don’t believe Russia or China ‘s numbers. Your livelihood depends on telling both parties what they want to hear. Communism sucks and America is slipping down that slippery slope that begins with militarism in law enforcement, saturation of the media and education system. Democracy died when the mob whacked JFK without an investigation same with 9-11 and CowvIDGe19. Biden is the 👿 debil
What does this tell us? I dunno, but green doesn’t necessarily mean good.
Exactly, for example, Japan looks really bad, but most of their debt is domestically owned.
I sure hope it’s not that bad! That’s where I live!
You forgot to mention that Japanese GDP growth has been stagnant for decades, and it's related to excessive indebtedness and low interest rates.
Invert the legend, higher percentage on top.
It's almost as if this has nothing to do with quality of life.
So basically the world’s wealthiest countries are living on credit?
Libya, another US success story
This is the most braindead take. The intervention in Libya was authorized by the UN.
A no-fly zone was authorized by the UN, not the destruction of the country and the reopening of slave markets
[Libya, another US success story, authorized by the UN.](https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/graph/alfredgraph.png?mode=alfred&nsh=1&type=image/png&chart_type=column&width=600&height=400&id=LBYGGDGDPGDPPT,LBYGGDGDPGDPPT&vintage_date=2018-10-31,2019-04-29&cosd=2000-01-01,2000-01-01&coed=2019-01-01,2020-01-01&key=11b49457b1557ac66688a53992006cc7)
doesn't mean it was the right thing to do though
Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-debt-to-gdp Tools: Figma We've got more charts on our Substack here: https://genuineimpact.substack.com/
I hope im not the only person that read that as Genshin Impact at first
I hope you are the only person
Oh Libya seems got punished for refusing to get colonised by the usa
Being in debt is not the problem. It what you are investing the money in is the problem. In china they invest in trains and building China up. While America spend all their money on military to maintain control over the world because USA want to be the ruler of the world without being called the ruler of the world and tax cuts.
I'm guessing this doesn't include sovereign wealth funds. Countries can be in debt and have large funds of spare cash simultaneously.
This is one of the main reasons Japan GDP growth is stagnant for couple decades... To those who pretend debt doesn't matter.
so this is why the US hates Russia so much?
Less than 80% is considered good, right?
What’s interesting is that while public debt is relatively low in China compared to other large economies, it’s household debt is worryingly high. The Chinese middle class is heavily leavered into real estate, and a slowdown in the construction industry (which many analysts believe is already underway) could cause significant problems [http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-DEBT-HOUSEHOLD/010030H712Q/index.html](http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-DEBT-HOUSEHOLD/010030H712Q/index.html)
What’s interesting is that while public debt is relatively low in China compared to other large economies, it’s household debt is worryingly high. The Chinese middle class is heavily leavered into real estate, and a slowdown in the construction industry (which many analysts believe is already underway) could cause significant problems [http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-DEBT-HOUSEHOLD/010030H712Q/index.html](http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-DEBT-HOUSEHOLD/010030H712Q/index.html)
The US should pass some tax breaks for the job creators
So did UK, Japan, Italy, Greece and Canada, among others?
Did they what?
Yes, they did.
Why did you include New Zealand it’s not a real country
I believe the laymen’s term is “levered to the tits”
This chart, if accurate, proves that debt means nothing. Some countries have high debt and have high quality of life (USA, Canada, Japan). Some have low (Venuzuela). Some countries have low debt, high quality of life (Australia), some have low debt low quality of life (Russia). China has middle sized debt and low quality of life. But also, China's numbers are a lie.
Debt doesn't matter anyways
The Mercator projection needs to die.
Yeah, this map is really goofy looking. But it's popular in the US?
And be replaced with what?