Quote:
Originally posted by RawAlex@Feb 28 2004, 03:02 AM
The numbers speak clearly for themselves. that is where the "look over the last 10 years" tells a whole story.
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The only thing that is clear is that four years is not ten years. ;-)
Yes, in the last 10 years debt as a percentage of GDP decreased and then increased and ended lower than where it started. What you're really saying though is "look over the last 4 years" which is not much of a trend at all. If you want to look at four years, it is up. If you want to look at ten years, it is down a little.
I guess you could say look over the last 20 years and then you would see a clear trend up. Or you could say, compare to 1946 and then you would see it is now much lower.
You could also compare to the other large economies of the world (say the G7 countries) and you would find that the US debt/GDP ratio is pretty much the same as that of France and Germany and much less than that of Italy or Japan. The US debt ratio is not remarkable in any way compared to the G7 average. In fact it is completely average. What is remarkable in comparison is not the US debt but the size of the US economy.