February 4, 2013

More important things to worry about than the national debt

Ryan McLain, IVN  The national debt was one of the biggest issues during the 2012 election cycle. It has been ingrained into our minds by the media and politicians as the most urgent problem facing the nation.

Due to this cultural fear of the debt that has manifested itself over the past few years, this will likely come as a surprise. Even more, the notion of owing 16 trillion dollars as an issue of little importance will seem outlandish.

Currently, the United States has a public debt, as a percentage of GDP, of 73 percent. While somewhat larger than typical, since 1940 our public debt percentage has continually hovered around 40 percent, with the greatest amount being 113 percent during World War II, and the lowest amount being 24.6 percent in 1974.

This low point of 24.6 percent was during the third worst economic crisis in the last 100 years. Meanwhile, during the economic boom of the Clinton presidency, debt varied between 49.5 percent and 34.5 percent. The notion that having a large amount of debt is inherently bad for the economy or that lowering the debt will improve the economy is a fallacy.

Public debt also shows that, compared to the rest of the world, we are by no means in an extreme situation. In fact, we are not even in the top 30 nations with the highest public debt as a percentage of GDP....

Economists also are not sold on the belief that the national debt is the most crucial of problems. One such individual is Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. In a January 1 article, he stated his belief that the nation can outgrow the debt:
Krugman is joined by individuals such as economist Dean Baker, Mother Jone’s Kevin Drum, economist Zachary Karabell, and many others who also feel that the debt crisis is not all that it is made out to be.

1 comment:

Anna Willson said...

I am not surprised that our country has so huge national debt. To my mind, we have this situation because in crisis that we had in 2008. Financial crisis is never an easy thing to go through. In most of occasions the consequences of it affect as social as political life. Lots of our citizens are looking for ways to stay afloat and need to find a steady source of income but it’s easier for those who already have some job experience. For youth it’s much harder to get a decent job because in most of occasions they lack required experience and employees don’t want to hire them. Because of financial crisis many consumers contact QuickAndEasyLoanService to stay afloat and cover at least basic expenses.