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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (87968)	1/5/2001 8:38:52 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Respond to of 132070

Skeeter, I haven't looked at the national debt figures recently, but I suspect they look better now than they did several years ago. Here are the ways you can "play" with the numbers. Some people refer to the national debt as those securities that are in the public's hands as opposed to that portion plus the ones held by government trust funds. I think the difference is well over a trillion dollars in debt. I'm sure you can verify it at the treasury dept web page. No debt figures that I have seen incorporate future liabilities on current promises. The national debt and deficit (surplus) are calculated on a cash basis and not on an accrual basis like it is done in business. I'm still not sure about how the GDP figures are calculated, but it's clear that GDP is a lot higher than it was several years ago. So even if the total debt has been climbing a bit, GDP has been growing faster. I think the GDP figures that are presented are actually fairly clean in terms of their dollar value. The portion that is questionable has to do with what portion represents real growth and what portion represents inflation and other statistical manipulations. That's where all the new hedonics etc... comes in. Wayne