What would the American economy look like for one person?

snow scorpion

John Stossel was on The O'Reilly Factor last night showing what a single individual's finances would look like if they were in the same ratio as America's economy.

Annual income: $24,700

Annual spending: $37,900

New credit card debt: $13,300

Existing credit card balance: $153,500

Recent belt tightening:$385

Imagine someone being $150,000 in debt, adding another $13,000 of debt this year and then bragging about $385 that he recently decided not to spend. :eek:

The important character there being the $. A person does not have their own currency printing press.

Amerika

I watched that segment also. What was equally important about the segment was the part where they showed a simplified chart (which I wish I could find) of Obama’s proposed budget to people on the street. And the majority were horrified by what they saw.

Here is what I got out of the segment that alarmed me the most.

1. You don’t seem to get simplified, easy to understand, information like this from the mainstream media (MSM). One has to go somewhere like Fox News to see it. And Fox is demonized by the MSM for doing and presenting these type of things.

2. People who rely primarily on the MSM to get their information will be voting come November, and are not seeing these alarming statistics. Or they just don’t care... which is equally alarming.

I'm sure an Irish equivalent of this would look similar or worse?

RichieC

So basically someone with mortgage?

southsiderosie

Amerika wrote: »

I watched that segment also. What was equally important about the segment was the part where they showed a simplified chart (which I wish I could find) of Obama’s proposed budget to people on the street. And the majority were horrified by what they saw.

Here is what I got out of the segment that alarmed me the most.

1. You don’t seem to get simplified, easy to understand, information like this from the mainstream media (MSM). One has to go somewhere like Fox News to see it. And Fox is demonized by the MSM for doing and presenting these type of things.

2. People who rely primarily on the MSM to get their information will be voting come November, and are not seeing these alarming statistics. Or they just don’t care... which is equally alarming.

Then you aren't looking. The NY Times does extensive on-line interactive graphics based on publicly available economic and census data every weekend. They have also done 'balance the budget' interactive web programs, which highlight exactly where federal spending goes. The LA Times did a similar web-based interactive graphic for the California budget - I posted about it myself a few months ago.

Honestly, I don't know what you are complaining about; there are plenty of print-based and online resources for this kind of stuff.

southsiderosie

snow scorpion wrote: »

John Stossel was on The O'Reilly Factor last night showing what a single individual's finances would look like if they were in the same ratio as America's economy.

Imagine someone being $150,000 in debt, adding another $13,000 of debt this year and then bragging about $385 that he recently decided not to spend. :eek:

Individuals can't print their own money, nor set their own interest rates for debt repayment. So I don't think that this is in any way a useful comparison.

Also, debt isn't inherently bad; the bigger issue is what is that debt for. debt for a house or for educational expenses is not the same thing as debt for consumption. Unfortunately too much of the US's debt is due to war-mongering and entitlement spending.