lol...that was pretty fun. USA is a GDP beast.

Its a shame that the national debt is now bigger than the GDP for a whole year. Basically USA and every citizen has to work for a whole year for free to pay it off...

Here is a fun fear mongering site - http://www.usdebtclock.org/

But USA is not as bad as some other countries, like Japan or Greece...

lol, even if you work one year straight for free and sell your last pants you still won't be able to repay the debt simply because US economy is like $5-6 trillion smaller than it supposed to be. In fact, when this financial system was born, it was never supposed to repay the debt, it was supposed to accumulate it endlessly. But sooner or later it will be back to equlibrium. Technically it's not a problem just to print more money, since USD is de facto global currency (gold standard non-existent long time ago), but economy will collapse next day. Though it's exactly what's happening right now, but at far more slower pace. Japan, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and dozens of other 'troubled' economies are direct or indirect victims of fall in demand in US.

GDP is a flawed way of measuring quality of life in many regards:

 - If a window were to be broken, and replaced a few days later, this would be measured as a positive in GDP, yet the quality of life has not increased, in fact, for the days in which the window was missing, it would have decreased. The same goes for any maintenance or repair work.

 - GDP makes no effort to measure the negatives of economic activity - people suffering from pollution related illness clearly haven't seen their quality of life increase, nor does it take into account the destruction of the environment, biodiversity loss, or any other suffering.

 - Healthcare costs are billed as a positive. Whilst it is true that some of the costs will be a positive on the quality of life, the fact that healthcare is required at all in many cases is a negative.

 - It makes no mention of the things that truly make life worth living - relationships, friends, family, liberty, etc - things that might be restricted or monitored in a totalitarian regime with a fast growing economy.

 - Then we have the statistics themselves. You can't trust any statistic coming from any Government agency, as far as I'm concerned - ESPECIALLY those from the likes of China. Sure, China had ~10% economic growth last year... according to China...

- Spending on arms and military. Sure, a certain level is required in order to protect the quality of life. But, if we look at the USSR, which was the second largest economy back in the day... people were starving, or dying from the cold, whilst billions were spent on an arms race with the USA. It's all that money spent on militia that made their GDP so large, and yet it had no representation on the standard of living.

 - Finally, when being used to compare different country's economies, as is the point of this article, it is flawed, due to the nature of currency conversion. Countries with a larger leniancy on exports will appear stronger than what they really are, as their currency will be stronger when converted over to dollars.

This, btw, wasn't a stab at the USA, or anything like that. Its GDP is a massive achievement... fortunately, the USA also tops out on many of the more important aspects to quality of life - natural beauty, liberty, etc. Sure, some inner-cities will have issues with pollution, but that's the same everywhere on the globe (probably a couple of exceptions).

Debt can grow as long as economies can grow. Of course, the question lies with whether or not its possible for economies to continously grow (what with the strong correlation between economic activity and energy, as well as dwindling resources).

Oh, really, I was there, it was fine, in fact, better in many regards than nowadays at least in terms quality and affordable food and comfy apartment. It seems they're still feeding you these cold war myths =) But everything else is true, I was trying to make the same point, but was ignored.

Haha, well, whether USSR stereotypes are false or not, military spending does create a gap between GDP and quality of life. Perhaps North Korea would have been a better example.

Well, certain experts suggest that US economy stopped growing somewhere in early 90s. A lot of smaller economies especially in Europe, e.g. Baltic states, were entirely based on IMF funding and despite rapid growth of GDP (up to 15% a year) and well-being now literally in ruins.

Nice find. Very interesting maps.

Saw this in the economist yesterday, really shows the economic power of the US

Yes, I was talking healthily... debt can grow healthily aslong as economies can grow enough to cover them. What is happening is that the rate of debt is exceeding the rate of growth. When all those Eastern European countries started taking out loans in the 90s and the early 00s, the assumption was that the economies would be far better off now than what they actually are, hence the fallout of the debts.

The problem with the PIIGS wasn't the level of debts that they had per se - it was that their economies were spoiled by bubbles and fuzzy numbers which meant that it was assumed that they would be better off now, so the debt would be fine. People only noticed the, say, that the property bubble in Spain WAS a bubble after it burst.... the economy made a massive recession, and suddenly all preconceived ideas about Spain being able to pay back debts went down the shitter.