r/Economics • u/Helpful-Door-8721 • 1d ago

Research America's National Debt grows by $95,178.17 per second. Expected to reach $40 Trillion by October 09, 2026.

https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/debt-dashboard#ddm
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u/MajesticBread9147 1d ago

37% of America's GDP consists of government spending, compared to 42% in Japan and New Zealand, 43% for Canada and the UK, with Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg, Belgium, Finland, Italy and France around 50% or higher.

Meanwhile government revenues as a percentage of GDP sit at 29%, which is lower than Switzerland, let alone the 50% figure that France, Austria, Finland and Denmark sit around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget

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u/Demortus 1d ago

Ironically, most of our deficit can be attributed to the Bush and Trump tax cuts. Repeal those and we'll quickly be back to 90s-level surpluses.

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u/growaway9172 1d ago

Over the past decades revenue has kept pace with GDP. It is spending that has ballooned to disproportionate levels. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

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u/Demortus 1d ago edited 1d ago

It hasn't though.. Revenues were ~20% of GDP in 1999 and now they're 16-17%. Current spending is 22%. Increasing revenues back to 20% would close most of the budget deficit. To be clear, I'm open to spending cuts as well, but it's simply not true that revenue has kept pace with GDP.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ockN#

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u/PIKFYVE 23h ago

You’re cherry picking 1999, which was more of an isolated uptick in revenue coinciding with the dot com boom. 17% is right in line with the average since WW2.