Greg Mankiw had a post yesterday called How indebted is the U.S. government? that makes reference to a report from the Economic Council of Advisors. The report contained three charts that I thought were interesting. The first two compare employee compensation with productivity. The third show publicly owned debt as a percentage of GDP.
I thought this last one was particularly interesting because it shows our debt at almost half that of the other seven G8 nations and it is right at the 40 year average. However, as Mankiw points out, it is the years just beyond this chart that are worrisome because of rising entitlements like social security.
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