Greg Mankiw had a post yesterday called How indebted is the U.S. government? that references a report from the Economic Council of Advisors. The report contained three charts that I thought were interesting. The first two compare employee compensation with productivity. The third shows publicly owned debt as a percentage of GDP.
I thought this last one was particularly interesting because it shows our debt at almost half that of the other seven G8 nations, and it is right at the 40-year average. However, as Mankiw points out, the years just beyond this chart are worrisome because of rising entitlements like social security.
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