By 2025, U.S. government debt hit $38.3 trillion and China reached $18.7 trillion, both above the EU's $17.6 trillion total.
  • MattR@feddit.orgEnglish
    3·
    12 hours ago

    No, that’s not how you should compare debts. Either show debt per capita or debt as a percentage of GDP. The shown chart is just misleading.

    • Melchior@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      21·
      11 hours ago

      If you believe a debt crisis in Albania is as bad as one for in the US for the world economy, then you are right.

      • MattR@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        11 hours ago

        I have neither said that nor do I believe that and I think you have misunderstood me. I criticise how data is presented in this chart. That’s all.

  • HumbleExaggeration@feddit.orgEnglish
    11·
    19 hours ago

    Hm, ETFs usually grow by about 7-8 % historically. The US dept grew by 7,9 % historically. Is all the growth we see just money being borrowed?

    • Melchior@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      5·
      18 hours ago

      Generally speaking debt to GDP is a good indicator for that. If you borrow money and invest it well, which for a governement means infrastructure and education spending(also has to be done well though), then your economy should grow faster then your debt. However there is a big issue here, in that some countries have their central banks print money and then buy government debt with that. When that happens that is basically just the government lending money to itself, so a big fat zero.

      But a lot of US growth is debt fueld. Wars cost a lot of money after all.

    • Riddick3001@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 hours ago

      Source

      IMF takes the GDP from whatever CCP is reporting fyi. Don’t think it’s been verified by accountants or independent parties or anyhting.

  • verdi@tarte.nuage-libre.frFrançais
    1·
    13 hours ago

    Well this is a fucking useless plot. And I say this as someone who isn’t too fond of yanks. If the economy grew faster than the debt this means nothing, that’s why usually absolute debt values are contextualised with metrics like GDP (which is shit) or annual growth.

    • copacetic@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      11 hours ago

      For the US, only the state is debtor for the last years, while households, businesses, and foreigners are creditors.

      The key word to search for “sectoral balances”. I could not quickly find any good and recent data for the EU or China though. For Germany, state and foreigners are debtors, but that is probably not true for the whole EU.

    • Skua@kbin.earth
      3·
      17 hours ago

      National government debts are usually owed to a variety of domestic banks, private investors, and similar interests. I don’t know about China for sure, but I’ve never seen anything indicating that it’s different in this regard. Not much of it, as a proportion, is owed to foreign governments or investors. So far as I’m aware, the main unusual things about China’s government debt is that Chinese citizens have a high savings rate (meaning banks holding those savings have more to work with as creditors) and the provincial governments have quite a lot of debt (potentially almost as much as the central government when added up, though I don’t know where to get reliable numbers for this)

        • Skua@kbin.earth
          1·
          10 hours ago

          Money is only useful if people trust that they’ll get what they expect for it. A government can make a nationalised bank take a decision like that, but who’s going to use that currency if the government just snaps its fingers and makes 100 trillion yuan of everyone’s money disappear?