If We (the United States) Desired To Pay-Off The Whole Federal Debt, What Percentage Of Employees' Revenues Could Be Needed?

[maddockson74]

I'm just interested and have not discovered the numbers. The complete time period to repay your debt could be twelve months and only earnings need to be counted as revenue(no expense funds, and so on). I'm searching for just how significantly total revenue is received by all US personnel in one single year and what the present national debt is. May we pay it off in 1 year or do not US workers make adequate in one particular year to cover your debt? This may well appear as an incredibly basic issue to the ones that are knowledgeable in this, but your input would be appreciated by me. Please use numbers from 'unbiased' sources. Thank you.

[Eyou]

$1,000,000,000,000/300,000,000 citizens = $three,333.33 from every man, woman, and kid. Now, what if a man is operating at a couple of jobs to "make ends meet" and his wife is house raising his five youngsters. Is he now on the hook for $23,333.33? But he barely pulls down that much operating.  To answer your query, basically, I believe the answer is "All of it."   danielpauldavis's Suggestions Holy Bible: Modern English Version Amazon List Price: $four.99 Utilised from: $.01 Average Buyer Rating: four. out of 5(based on 33 reviews) Genesis 47:16-26 is how I believe it really is going to come about. danielpauldavis 59 months ago Please sign in to give a compliment. Please confirm your account to give a compliment. Please sign in to send a message. Please confirm your account to send a message.

[Lewellyn]

For starters: I'm going to compute the federal debt as $ten trillion.  That involves the $5 trillion in "intergovernmental loans", i.e. money that we've collected in Social Security and Medicare that are supposedly in a "trust fund" but which is genuinely just federal bonds.  But we have a quantity of other obligations, like veteran's benefits and the true Social Security obligations following the trust fund wears out.  That quantity is closer to $40 billion.  But $10 trillion is what you get from the Treasury Bulletin, so we'll stick with that. There are a couple of methods to compute that number.  1 way is to look at the GDP, which can be believed of as the sum of all income earned in the nation, though it also involves corporate earnings. (That is funds that could be wages, and the funds is owned by somebody, so somebody earned it.  It is not just the sort of artificial paper profit that a stock marketplace gains.) The GDP is about $14 trillion.  So we could pay that off in a single year.  About $12 trillion of that is employee compensation, and $8 billion is pure wages.  The rest is bonuses and investment earnings, which you would count as wages if you just wrote it out as a paycheck.   So, you have got three numbers to choose from correct there, and the answers are "yes, yes, no" so far.   Computed in a totally different way, by what's reported to the IRS, total income is only $3.6 trillion.   That's for 2006 for some purpose the IRS hasn't published the 2007 data but but it is about the identical order.  That's the Adjusted Gross Income they do not publish the raw gross income score, which is almost certainly closer to the $8 trillion from the Bureay of Economic Evaluation.

[Lawe]

Now, what if a man is working at a couple of jobs to "make ends meet" and his wife is home raising his five children. Is he now on the hook for $23,333.33? But he barely pulls down that much working.  To answer your question, essentially, I think the answer is "All of it."

[Doire]

Yes, and no, and yes, and sorta For starters: I'm going to compute the federal debt as $10 trillion.  That includes the $5 trillion in "intergovernmental loans", i.e. money that we've collected in Social Security and Medicare that are supposedly in a "trust fund" but which is really just federal bonds.  But we have a number of other obligations, like veteran's benefits and the real Social Security obligations after the trust fund wears out.  That number is closer to $40 billion.  But $10 trillion is what you get from the Treasury Bulletin, so we'll stick with that. There are a couple of ways to compute that number.  One way is to look at the GDP, which can be thought of as the sum of all money earned in the country, though it also includes corporate profits. (That's money that could be wages, and the money is owned by somebody, so somebody earned it.  It's not just the kind of artificial paper profit that a stock market gains.) The GDP is about $14 trillion.  So we could pay that off in one year.  About $12 trillion of that is employee compensation, and $8 billion is pure wages.  The rest is bonuses and investment income, which you would count as wages if you just wrote it out as a paycheck.   So, you've got three numbers to choose from right there, and the answers are "yes, yes, no" so far.   Computed in a completely different way, by what's reported to the IRS, total income is only $3.6 trillion.   That's for 2006; for some reason the IRS hasn't published the 2007 data yet but it's about the same order.  That's the Adjusted Gross Income; they don't publish the raw gross income score, which is probably closer to the $8 trillion from the Bureay of Economic Analysis. PamPerdue 59 months ago Please sign in to give a compliment. Please verify your account to give a compliment. Please sign in to send a message. Please verify your account to send a message.

[Ubel]

I admit, though, what I'm looking at includes more than just "worker's income." I'm looking at the statistics for personal income for the entire nation, which includes management and retiree income.   First, let's look at the national debt. As I'm looking, the total national debt posted by the Treasury Department is as of close of business, 02/10/2009; that figure was $10,721,365,792,566.28.   Now, let's look at national income. To make things a little easier, I'll look at the total for 2008, as determined by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis. That figure was $12,099.0 billion.(Table 2, on Page 8 of that file, if you follow the link.)   In other words, if we were put on the sort of "austerity" budget that the International Monetary Fund puts other nations on, we could be looking at something like this:   Income $12,099.0 billion. Payoff  $10,721.4 billion. Remainder $1,377.6 billion   So, yeah. It would be tough, but we could pay off the national debt in one year. Pretty impressive, when you consider that the United States Government has never not been in debt, eh?   Of course, I am presuming that the United States Government is telling us the truth. Or, at least, the best estimate of the truth that the statisticians have.

[jeric100]

In order to properly document my answer I had to take up an answer slot. The answer, to sum it up, was "It depends on what you consider income". By the broadest measure, yes, we could do it in a year. By the narrowest, no.But by the broadest measure of debt, the answer is "Oh, hell no, we're totally screwed."

[Elhanan]

Thanks for the great answer Pam! I find the numbers a little disturbing. My thinking, when asking the question involved the 'narrowest' numbers you gave. I found the comparison between the numbers from the IRS in regards to income and the debt down right frightening. It seems to me(and please share your thoughts on this), if this generation of workers realistically wanted to pay off the national federal debt, we would all need to pay a monthly equivalent to a mortgage payment on a home that cost as much as we make in a year(you can choose whether that would be a 15 or 30 year mortgage). That is a sobering thought.

[gwynethpaltrow8]

marissa said: 2 Thanks for the great answer Pam! I find the numbers a little disturbing. My thinking, when asking the question involved the 'narrowest' numbers you gave. I found the comparison between the numbers from the IRS in regards to income and the debt down right frightening. It seems to me(and please share your thoughts on this), if this generation of workers realistically wanted to pay off the national federal debt, we would all need to pay a monthly equivalent to a mortgage payment on a home that cost as much as we make in a year(you can choose whether that would be a 15 or 30 year mortgage). That is a sobering thought. 59 months ago

[Bethel]

PamPerdue said: 1 In order to properly document my answer I had to take up an answer slot. The answer, to sum it up, was "It depends on what you consider income". By the broadest measure, yes, we could do it in a year. By the narrowest, no.But by the broadest measure of debt, the answer is "Oh, hell no, we're totally screwed." 59 months ago