U.S. Debt clock

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Freedomforall
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U.S. Debt clock

Post by Freedomforall »

Not sure how accurate this is. It also has options to put in different states and view their debt.

https://usdebtclock.org/?fbclid=IwAR3nk ... B-9iQC9__k
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Jim
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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As Medicare and Social Security are separately funded, this seems misleading in not having the income and expenses in each of these together. I expect it's accurate but designed with a political purpose in the way it's represented.

Here's a pie chart to show where discretionary spending goes.
Image
Source: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/anal ... dget-2020/
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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... And until we can get the billionaire class to pay its freight as far as tax goes it's only going to get worse.
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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I suspect that there are some assumptions underlying it that may be difficult to prove. As a display it would be frightening ( for you Americans, that is ) if it were true. I would think that the equivalent for the UK would be similar but with smaller numbers. There are the equivalents for China, India and Russia but they don't go into the detail of the American one.
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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Realistically, what are we supposed to do about it?
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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moonshadow wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 6:56 pm Realistically, what are we supposed to do about it?
Vote for the people who will implement crfriend's suggestion.
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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Jim wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 7:01 pm
moonshadow wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 6:56 pm Realistically, what are we supposed to do about it?
Vote for the people who will implement crfriend's suggestion.
Well... the Democrats are in charge, this is what they ran on afterall...

We're waiting...
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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Now I'm not an economist, but it would seem to me that a government with the ability to print money out if thin air doesn't really have to worry about debts and deficits, provided the citizens can afford to pay the resulting inflation...

What was it Biden said about not creating additional taxes on people making less than $400k annually?

Don't get me wrong, Trump pulled the same stunt with his Asian tariffs.

Two wings of the same bird they are...

The price of a bag of sugar didn't go up, it just went from 4lbs to 3lbs while the price "per bag" stayed the same...

Too bad the government can't hatch a way to conceal the price of fuels like they can a box of cereal...

But dag nabit, a gallon is still a gallon... :wink:

So tell me Jim, Carl, etc... when both are working for the same people, whom shall I vote for?

Sewer rat still seems most appropriate to me... :lol:
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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moonshadow wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 7:51 pm Now I'm not an economist, but it would seem to me that a government with the ability to print money out if thin air doesn't really have to worry about debts and deficits, provided the citizens can afford to pay the resulting inflation...
One thing this pandemic has demonstrated is that parts of the economy don't work quite the way economists thought they did. Food for many many economics papers in the future.

As for the printing of money, you have MMT (Modern Monetary Theory or Magic Money Tree, depending on who you ask). I believe it matters less how much money the government/central bank creates, and more where it ends up. Printing money and sending cheques to everyone is going to have a wildly different effect from a central bank buying up bonds on the market. And rich, stable countries can do things poor countries cannot.

As long as the US holds onto its reputation as a reserve currency that people trust, they can afford to print forever. But the US has been working hard to undermine this trust over the years, so one wonders when the house of cards will come down.
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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rode_kater wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 9:27 pm As long as the US holds onto its reputation as a reserve currency that people trust, they can afford to print forever. But the US has been working hard to undermine this trust over the years, so one wonders when the house of cards will come down.
I figured as long as the U.S. has a strong economy. Currently the strongest in the world to my understanding, which makes the dollar pretty strong..

The part of the debt clock that I paid attention to was the debt's ratio to the gross domestic product, which I understand is basically considered the "total output" of an economy. I rather likened it to the "horse power" of an engine, and the debt like a grade. The higher the debt (steeper the grade), the more GDP (horse power) you need to climb it but again, I'm no economist. But to continue the analogy, I believe it may be about time to downshift. As much as I hate to admit it, it does seem like it may be about time for the Federal Reserve to start hiking interest rates.

Anyway, it makes sense. The U.S. dollar is strong because it's backed by a strong economy. But it can still fail, and even so, it's not the most valuable currency in the world.

It is interesting to note that the U.S. has seen higher inflation rates in the past. A simple Google search reveals inflation rates at around 19% in 1917 and just shy of 30% in 1778 back when the country was first founded. [0]

I suppose these days almost anything could be used as a hedge against inflation. Even used cars apparently. What strange times we live in...

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer ... ory-us.asp
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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moonshadow wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 10:39 pmI figured as long as the U.S. has a strong economy.
It doesn't. It's one of the weaker ones because of its very nature, and that instability has only been magnified over time. Nowadays it's one "bubble" after another, "boom and bust" with each succeeding "bust" never recovering to where it was before the bubble formed. Worse are the so-called "jobless recoveries" which are now the norm, and the only reason it looks like it recovered is the rampant gambling on Wall Street. The "Little Economy" (where the 99.99% of the population lives) has been in free-fall for decades.

However, there's a positively massive propaganda machine that spends all its time convincing folks of the "strong economy", when many have been unable to find suitable jobs for years, and sometimes decades. Massachusetts still hasn't recovered from the massive failure of the minicomputer companies in the late 1980s and '90s.
It is interesting to note that the U.S. has seen higher inflation rates in the past. A simple Google search reveals inflation rates at around 19% in 1917 and just shy of 30% in 1778 back when the country was first founded. [0]
It was pretty bad in the aftermath of World War II which was funded by future inflation, and it was pretty bad again in the early 1970s when the country actually fiddled with wage and price controls in an attempt to bring the impending disaster to a safe and relatively painless conclusion.

Since 1981, it's all been Laissez Faire capitalism with no restraint or control. 1929 all over again.
New cars have pretty much been off-limits to what little is left of the middle class for some time now and the only way to afford transportation is to spring for used so astronomical are the prices for new. The last new car I bought was in 1990.
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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Moon, just as your bag of sugar decreased in size for a static price they do the same over here by say reducing the size f a chocolate bar by say 5 grammes for the same price. So the price of a gallon of petrol ( gas ) is prominently displayed so the volume of a gallon decreases to compensate. After all if it decreased by 0.05% you wouldn't notice but over a million gallons it starts to mount up. After all the Asian inch is 10% shorter than a western one. Remember that constants aren't and there's no such thing as a standard. Think of plugs and sockets for electricals. Incidentally one good thing that the EU has done they are standardising the charging points for mobile phones to usb-c much to Apples chagrin.

Incidentally you see pictures of mountains of dollars hoarded by say big drug dealers. And there must be billions of dollars hoarded in such, or similar, circumstances by various entities. And I am talking about bundles of paper money, not anything electronic. While that money sits in a pile in the dealer's cellar, or wherever, it is effectively out of circulation. It's "dead" money until it is spent. So how is all this money dealt with accounting-wise? Just a thought.
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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crfriend wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 10:53 pm
It is interesting to note that the U.S. has seen higher inflation rates in the past. A simple Google search reveals inflation rates at around 19% in 1917 and just shy of 30% in 1778 back when the country was first founded.
It was pretty bad in the aftermath of World War II which was funded by future inflation, and it was pretty bad again in the early 1970s when the country actually fiddled with wage and price controls in an attempt to bring the impending disaster to a safe and relatively painless conclusion.

Since 1981, it's all been Laissez Faire capitalism with no restraint or control. 1929 all over again.
Well, hopefully it won't be an exact repeat of 1929. At any rate, I am just not convinced that the vast majority of Americans are that badly off. It seems plenty of people who claim to be "poor" have no trouble filling their shopping carts up every day. One thing we have now that we didn't have in 1929 is a vast variety of government assistance programs, the biggest being SNAP (food stamps). Also, if you have children the government basically pays you the cost to raise the child. I know many here may disagree with that, but this is one thing I DO have a little experience on. $250 per month plus food stamps and CHIP (children's medicaid). The food stamps alone basically pays for the chillds monthly food, the $250 would help to pay for incidentals. Some months it may not cover it (back to school), but other months it would be more than enough so it should balance out. Granted the kid is not going to sport designer clothes right off the rack, but it can provide for the basic necessities, and even that is a LOT more than what kids had to work with in the 1930's.

I don't know, maybe the sky is falling. But again, what are we going to do about it? Nothin.... There's nothing we can do... right? It is what it is.
Sinned wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:35 pm Moon, just as your bag of sugar decreased in size for a static price they do the same over here by say reducing the size f a chocolate bar by say 5 grammes for the same price. So the price of a gallon of petrol ( gas ) is prominently displayed so the volume of a gallon decreases to compensate. After all if it decreased by 0.05% you wouldn't notice but over a million gallons it starts to mount up. After all the Asian inch is 10% shorter than a western one. Remember that constants aren't and there's no such thing as a standard.
Well, perhaps across international borders there may not be a "standard", but in the U.S. a gallon is still a gallon. Also, my sugar example was just an example. So far I've not seen a 3lb bag replace the standard 4lb bag, though when I was growing up I do seem to recall sugar coming in 5lb bags. I do see these type of pricing games take place in "less standard" packaging, such as cereal boxes, loaves of bread, sodas, crackers, really anything that's sold in a box, etc. Often times when comparing prices I do look at the quantity, or how many you get in a box vs another brand.

Check this out... pulled this out of my pantry just now...
Can you spot the difference?
greenpeas.jpg
Guess which one is the 2021 can?

This drives me insane... it's deceptive for one, and I feel like suppliers are trying to pull a fast one... Additionally it's not good for the environment. It creates additional waste. The object should be to get as much product in as little packaging as possible.

My message to retailers and suppliers:
If you're going to charge more... just raise the damned price already, stop trying to deceive the public.
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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moonshadow wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 7:35 pm
Well... the Democrats are in charge, this is what they ran on afterall...

We're waiting...
They won't be able to do much unless they get rid of the filibuster or get a bigger majority in the Senate.
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Re: U.S. Debt clock

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Sinned wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:35 pm Incidentally you see pictures of mountains of dollars hoarded by say big drug dealers. And there must be billions of dollars hoarded in such, or similar, circumstances by various entities. And I am talking about bundles of paper money, not anything electronic. While that money sits in a pile in the dealer's cellar, or wherever, it is effectively out of circulation. It's "dead" money until it is spent. So how is all this money dealt with accounting-wise? Just a thought.
You can't account for it, that kind of the problem. People spend a lot of time worrying about the amount of money but the other very important variable is the velocity of money: how many times a year the average dollar/euro/pound is spent. Economic output = amount of money times the velocity. Those piles of cash are not doing anything and so deduct from the velocity.

The velocity is very hard to measure, you only have indirect indicators.

That's kind of what we saw in the pandemic: because people stopped spending on various things, the velocity dropped, so to maintain economic output you have to increase the amount of money. The trick is that once the velocity increases again (like now), ideally you'd like to destroy that money again. This is usually done via taxes or increasing interest rates. But because you don't actually know the velocity you don't know how much money to destroy. And it keeps changing anyway. By the time you have an idea of what it was it's changed already.

Steering the economy is like riding a skittish horse. You can observe the horse and try to predict what it's going to do, but sometimes the horse just does something else.
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