{"id":194663,"date":"2019-09-12T05:53:15","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T05:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=194663"},"modified":"2019-09-15T07:01:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T07:01:43","slug":"this-is-how-much-debt-your-country-has-per-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=194663","title":{"rendered":"This is how much debt your country has per person"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Alex Gray \u2013 World Economic Forum Oct 4, 2017<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">\u201cNeither a borrower nor a lender be,\u201d Shakespeare\u2019s Polonius warns his son Laertes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Today, however, many governments are getting by on borrowed money. Borrowing allows governments to cover shortfalls without having to increase taxes or cut back public spending. But too much debt can hurt economies, especially in a recession.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The US just passed $20 trillion in debt for the first time, while the UK owes \u00a31.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk\/\">and counting<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The US and UK are not the most indebted countries though. Japan\u2019s debt reached 221.8% of GDP in 2015, according to the <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.oecd-ilibrary.org\/docserver\/download\/4217001e.pdf?expires=1505817633&amp;id=id&amp;accname=guest&amp;checksum=484A46B02D28E4719188800722A755DC\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>OECD Government at a Glance<\/strong><\/span><\/a> report.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_194664\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/General-government-gross-debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-194664\" class=\"wp-image-194664\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/General-government-gross-debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP-768x246.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"173\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/General-government-gross-debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP-768x246.png 768w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/General-government-gross-debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP-300x96.png 300w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/General-government-gross-debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP.png 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-194664\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Note individuals in Russia owe a fraction of what their counterparts in the U.S. owe. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>How much is it per person?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">One way to think about government debt is in per capita terms. So, for example, if the Japanese wanted to pay off their national debt, they would owe $90,345 each.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Among OECD countries, Ireland, the US and Italy are next, with $62,687, $61,539, and $58,693 respectively.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Belgium, at $58,134, is above the OECD average of $50,245.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Austria, France and Greece all have higher per capita debts than the UK, and their citizens would have to find almost $50,000 each ($49,975, $49,652 and $47,869 respectively).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Per capita debt among OECD countries has increased at an average annual rate of 5.9% since 2007. The amount owed per person in each country varies dramatically, from Japan\u2019s $90,345 to Estonia\u2019s $3,761.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>The rise of debt<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The level of gross government debt as a percentage of its GDP is an indicator of how able a country is to pay back debts without incurring further debt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">When a government borrows money, it has to pay it back with interest. So when interest rates go up or the economy slows down, debt levels can become unsustainable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In 2015, the average level of gross public debt in the OECD countries reached 112% of GDP. That\u2019s compared to 73% in 2007, before the financial crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Debt levels increased the most in Spain, Slovenia, Portugal, and Greece.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Only three OECD countries have reduced their debt levels since the financial crisis: Norway, Switzerland and Israel. Countries with the highest public debt throughout this period are Japan, at 221.8% of GDP in 2015, followed by Greece (181.6%), Italy (157.5%) and Portugal (149.2%).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Although Greece\u2019s debt\/GDP ratio is significantly lower than Japan\u2019s, the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/dealing-with-greek-debt-needs-a-radical-rethink-lessons-from-japan-45908\">consequences have been much more severe in Greece<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, not least because the debt is owed to foreign rather than domestic creditors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2017\/10\/this-is-how-much-debt-your-country-has-per-person\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A breakdown of what individuals in each country owe the Rothschilds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Economics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194666,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194663\/revisions\/194666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}