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Old 07-24-2007, 02:37 PM
spider spider is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Wash DC
Posts: 592
Default Re: Collapse of the American Economy?

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The US will be facing huge debt and ever increasing obligations to Social Security and Medicare.

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US debt as percentage of GDP is currently not great but certainly not terrible. This wiki graph gives a nice historical perspective. As you can see on the graph, we've been in the 50% to 70% range for the last 20 years. Also, for a current perspective, Japan's debt percentage is 176%. Anyway, US debt is higher than it should be but it's quite manageable.

As far as Social Security & Medicare, benefits will have to be cut over time, so they will. Only question is how severe the cuts will be which will depend on how long the cuts are put off.

Bottom line: US might be looking at a slowdown in growth or even a recession, but there is no reason to expect a collapse on the horizon (absent some natural or man-made calmamity occurring). Argentina is a particularly bad comparison as they just put themselves in a terrible position by propping up their currency at unsustainable levels. Their collapse was about as expected as a collapse can be.

Edit to add: wiki graph appears to be based on gross federal debt rather than debt held by public (which is generally considered a better measure of the true debt burden). Debt held by public is around 60% of the gross debt, so the graph basically overstates the size of the debt. Still, it more or less conveys the current debt burden from a historical perspective.
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