My newspaper published these numbers recently and I just wanted to share them since my country ranks first! Hooray! For those not able to translate the names listed: 1:Belgium 2: France 3: Holland 4: Austria 5: Finland 6: Sweden 7: Italy 8: Luxemburg 9: European average 10: Germany 11: Denmark 12: Spain 13: Norway 14: Ireland 15: UK 16: Canada 17: World Average 18: Japan 19:US Seems like all the Obama is a socialist screaming is a tad overblown no?
have you noticed how the mains ones are in the eu. thanks for posting. do you have figures for private debt. i think that would change things. perhaps the figure in your country is high because the government has crowded out private sector?
Canadians' household debt is about 140 per cent of disposable income, compared with about 150 per cent in Britain and almost 170 per cent in the United States. The level is about 90 per cent among the countries that use the euro. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/06/china-lectures-australia-on-failures-of.html
How does your paper define 'public sector cost'? Judging by the numbers, they just look at the current public expenditure. If that's true, it's really not very useful or interesting. The whole public sector problem in countries like the UK, the US and Japan is the unfunded FUTURE liabilities, like the public sector pensions and healthcare. These are items that don't appear in the current account, but their magnitude is absolutely staggering. For example, the UK figure, according to some estimates, currently stands at smth like 85% of nominal GDP. I don't think any EZ country comes close.
You are correct in your assumption. I apologise if the numbers indeed do have no real substance in the bigger scheme of things.
Unfunded liabilities indeed. The whole SS will be broke meme comes from various R administrations treating the Social Security trust fund as part of the general fund. Unfunded liabilities could easily be turned into funded liabilities by removing the income cap on social security taxes and extending them to passive income. As it is now Social Security and Medicare taxes are paid only by those who work for wages.