The U.S. Government’s Financial Position, Based on the Official Numbers

12 December 2024, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

The following data were assembled by me from the official Governmental sources so as to provide a different basis from that in the U.S. propaganda-media regarding the financial condition of the U.S. Government. Specifically, the Republican Party ‘news’-medium (libertarian or neoliberal, slanted so as to encourage its readers to vote for Republicans against Democrats) ZeroHedge had headlined on December 11th “Government Spending Shock: US Budget Deficit Soars In Worst Start To Year On Record” and presented ten graphs in order to pretend that it’s Democrats instead of Republicans that are to blame for this, though the economic record of the Republican Party is no better than that of the Democratic Party, and the real blame for this is America’s billionaires of both Parties, who virtually own this corrupt Government, lock, stock, and barrel, and are ripping off the American public while enormously further-enriching themselves in the process of this massive institutionalized corruption. It’s a politically bipartisan operation:

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60843

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/t8Bt0

Summary for Fiscal Year 2024

8 November 2024

In fiscal year 2024, which ended on September 30, the federal budget deficit totaled $1.8 trillion — an increase of $138 billion (or 8 percent) from the shortfall recorded in the previous year.

Outlays in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 were affected because October 1 (the first day of the fiscal year) fell on a weekend in each of those years. As a result, certain payments were shifted into the prior fiscal year — $64 billion from 2023 into 2022 and $75 billion from 2024 into 2023. If not for those shifts, the deficit in 2024 would have been 13 percent larger — instead of 8 percent larger — than it was in 2023.

The 2023 deficit of $1.7 trillion would have been larger if not for the recording of budgetary effects related to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a plan the Administration announced in 2022 to cancel many borrowers’ outstanding student loans. If those effects, and the effects of timing shifts, were excluded for fiscal year 2023, the deficit for that year would have been $2.0 trillion instead of $1.7 trillion.

Revenues rose by 11 percent, or $479 billion, and outlays increased by 10 percent, or $617 billion. Revenues in all major categories, but notably individual income taxes, were greater than they were in fiscal year 2023. The largest increase in outlays was for education ($309 billion). Net outlays for interest on the public debt rose by $239 billion (or 34 percent) to a total of $949 billion.

In 2024, the deficit was equal to 6.4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), an increase from 6.2 percent of GDP in 2023.

Compared with the size of the economy, federal debt held by the public also increased in 2024 — rising to 97.8 percent of GDP from 96.0 percent of GDP at the end of fiscal year 2023.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/268177/countries-with-the-highest-public-debt

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/1FKYF

[I provide links to explain the high percentage on particular countries that cannot reasonably be compared to the U.S. on these percentages.]

Top 10 Countries with the Highest Debt-to-GDP Ratios (%)

1. Sudan 316%

2. Japan 252%

3. Greece 169%

4. Singapore 162%

5. Argentina 155%

6. Venezuela 148%

7. Italy 137%

8. Bahrain 125%

9. Lao 123%

10. U.S. 122%

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator

https://web.archive.org/web/20240322045055/https://data.worldbank.org/indicator

ECONOMIC GROWTH IN GDP PPP

DURING THE 25 YEARS 1998-2022

(GDP PPP or Gross Domestic Product at Purchasing Power Parity, measures the economic growth that consumers — which includes employees — experience, whereas traditional GDP measures the economic growth that producers — the owners of businesses, the investors — experience)

China=$30.34/$3.04=9.98x

Russia=$5.33/$.8=6.66x

India=$11.9/$1.89=6.30x

WORLD=$164.53/$43.69=3.77x

S. Korea=$2.6/$.69=3.77x

U.S.=$25.44/$9.06=2.81x

EU=$19.6/$7.33=2.68x

Japan=$5.7/$3.22=1.77x

ECONOMIC GROWTH IN GDP

DURING THE 25 YEARS 1998-2022

China=$17.96/$1.03=17.44x

Russia=$2.24/$.27=8.30x

India=$3.42/$.42=8.14x

S. Korea=$1.67/$.38=4.4x

WORLD=$100.88/$31.75=3.18x

U.S.=$25.44/$9.06=2.81x

EU=$16.75/$7.97=2.10x

Japan=$4.26/$4.10=1.04x

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.