(US) Economic Reality Check

[vlad321]

mrstickball said:

vlad321 said:
I have always wondered how the US can label itself as the best economical country in the world with a debt at what? 12 trillion? Anyhow, I'm sure any other nation will be able to achieve the same amount if they were just given 12 trillion dollars.

To be fair, much of our economic growth which earned us the 'best economical country in the world' was prior to the horrible policies that are taking place in congress. Our insane spending only began in the 80's. We were a powerhouse well before then.

But you are correct in saying that having the kind of debt we do could let many countries achieve great gains. That is why many of us are aggrivated by the social policies they are trying to make: We don't have the cash to pay for them.

Fair enough. Though before the '80s much of the rest of the world was still trying to recover from WWII's destruction and playing catch-up to the US' untouched industries.

To be fair, the debt comes close to like 40k-ish per person in the US currently, elderly and children alike. Meanwhile 45k is the average for a 4 person family in the US currently. I don't think that any significant reduction in the debt will be possible without a significant economic drop or a huge drop in luxury expectations. Meaning all those HDTVs, cars, and other such goods should be far far rearer than they currently are.

 

Edit: A little more thinking about it. It seems that the more "modern" a nation is the more debt it has. The more the populance is used to luxury, or the standard of living, the worse the debt. This is leading me to believe that our economic and monetary theories are extremely obsolete already if these are the costs of modernity/