Visualizing Uncle Sam’s Debt
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Most Americans have debt. Mortgages aside, 43% of US households spend more than they earn in a year. It is no wonder that the median household has a balance of over $2,000 on their credit cards. The average balance is over $8,000, but that is skewed by a small number of less-than-thrifty individuals.
The US government also spends more than it earns. Whether this is an extension of its electorate or the setting of a bad example, the country as a whole is in worse shape than the sum of its parts.
We could go on about the trillions of dollars in debt, but numbers that large can feel really abstract. So, let’s take the nation’s spending down to the household scale. The median household pulls in $50,233 per year, the federal government around $3 trillion. Some basic arithmetic will put them in scale.
Now let’s look at our lenders. The majority of the Uncle Sam household debt is owed to the people of the United States. We can let this slide for now and focus on the foreign lenders, who represent one quarter of the total debt.
Below are the top seven foreign lenders, visualized as credit cards, while the image at the top shows the total of foreign lending. All numbers have been brought down to the U.S. median household scale. Just imagine your household with these balances and you will have a better perspective on just how large these debts really are.
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49 Comments so far
leave a commentThose cards look amazing!
absolutely awesome (–>Mint, not USA)! well-done.
ROFL – that’s great. I followed the link to this post expecting to see some ho-hum graph with a steep upturn, but this is quite a pleasant surprise. Well done!
Great graphics. I would love to see a followup illustrating the bailout plan in terms of a household budget and payback schedule. I am doing the same thing for my family, except in our case the plan includes actually cutting expenses and paying off the debt ;^)
I would like to see US Credit Card. Owning money to other countries matters less to me then owing money to Americans. At least when we owe money to ourselves – we are paying interest to Americans.
That’s a great way to put the debt in perspective. I like the use of credit cards. Your graphics guy or gal is amazing. I did something similar but my was just a graph and it’s not all that impressive:
http://fightthefuture.org/articles/who-ownes-us-debt
@Gaird, your idea for a followup is a good one and is something we will definitely consider.
Well, we’d better get workin’ to start paying off this debt. But who will bail us out?
I want to see both listings of who owes the United States money and what it would look like if the United States would have never have forgiven other countries of their debt to it and what would have been owed in that case too.
This is a great perspective to view the national debt. Like others have stated, I was expecting to see a graph of some sort… so this was refreshing. I enjoyed reading the article, and was surprised to read that the citizens of Luxembourg lend the equivalent of $145k per capita to the U.S.
Wow… with this much debt, McCain’s spending freeze sure looks appealing!
It sure does. I think I’ll vote for him.
Absolute perfect for the common folk to grasp the debt we are in. I had to show my wife, and she actually got it. The credit cards are perfectly done. And hey – that credit card number looks familiar. Maybe I should try to call it? Whomever came up with this concept did a perfect job. Too bad all of government or politics wasn’t this easy to grasp. Well done!
Props for using 8675309
Where can I find info on how the Pentagon asked Chase Manhattan to create a system of offshore banks? That story sounds pretty interesting.
re: McCain and his “spending freeze”:
1. If I were to use my household in this example and implement a “spending freeze”, the medical school my fiance has been accepted into would be nixed because it costs money, thereby saving my household money in the very short-term, but ultimately losing money in the long run. Spending money in the areas that help the economy and make sense are crucial. Stagnation is not the answer.
2. Do you really think the so-called “maverick” that voted with W. more than 90% of the time will run this country any differently? If so, I’d say it’s time to lay off the six-packs, Joe.
Gorgeous.
The British one would be much nicer if it said Britain or UK rather than England, though.
wow, great design! i’m from china.. the taiji and mao’s portrait plus the tainted ring of light get us right there. also love the lewd lions on japan card, don’t know what it means or where it comes from though.
England is NOT the UK you idiot
I love Mint. Just another reason I use them, cool stuff like this. Great blog post.
Regarding McCain’s spending freeze looking appealing. Last I heard, he will continue the Iraq war @$20 billion per week. What’s he going to freeze that can compare to that?
It would be so great, really, if you take notice of little things, like coats of arms, for example.
Am I supposed to gaze in awe at pure ignorance?
It’s not just the money guys, there’s also knowledge.
What in the world made you put the Bulgarian coat of arms on the Luxembourg card man? Both countries don’t have anything in common except from the continent. Do you even know where these countries are?
I love the graphics.
Nice graphics and breakdown, but you don’t owe England any money – you owe the United Kingdom the money, England being one (albeit fairly significant) part of the UK.
Speaking of which – Any new update on a role-out of Mint to the UK?
While it is true that you owe the United Kingdom the money, you actually owe most of that to the Bank of England, which is the central bank of… the United Kingdom.
Wow, nice work on the graphics the cards look so legit. I was actually trying to concieve of the trillions of dollars in debt i terms of a single person. This is exactly what I was looking for, with art to boot. It would be interesting to see the long term effects of a household over ten years (in terms of a household representing the US). Their annual income every year, how much they spend, how much they borrow, how much they pay back, and how much is lost to interest. The forecast for the next ten years probably looks more bleak than the current situation. And that is SCARY.
Great way of making a potentially-abstract figure relative to normal people, and great graphics for the cards. Interesting to note the comment about the Bulgarian coat of arms on the Luxembourg card, and the fun fact about the Pentagon and the offshore banks in the Caribbean… only thing that would have made this any better would have been a link for more information about that last bit, and maybe a flash script playing the “8675309″ song on the page…
kudos.
“While it is true that you owe the United Kingdom the money, you actually owe most of that to the Bank of England, which is the central bank of… the United Kingdom.”
- which is part of the global central banking system, which is controlled by “the Bank of International Settlements in Basel Switzerland, which is not controlled or owned by any government, but is a corporation with stocks. It is located on land that is not considered part of Switzerland or any other country, it is not answerable to any public body, and it does its business in secret.”
I’m far from an economist or a conspiracy theorist, but since these matters started to effect my daily life I’ve been looking into how the system works. The real story seems to be central bank monopoly over EVERYTHING
please tell me I’m wrong?
Kudos.
This is exactly what the average person needs.
We need similar tools to help inform voters about government spending (wish we had them). This will be shared.
This graphic is very well designed.
This is definitely 1 of what a person need.
these graphics are amazing. whoever did them is very skilled.
Congratulations. This is very creative.
John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed waiving the requirement that Americans age 70-1/2 and older must take a minimum distribution from their traditional IRAs.
AARP has joined as well. AARP’s chief executive sent a letter Thursday to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urging him to take immediate action to temporarily freeze mandatory retirement account withdrawals.
very creative and well thought out
Just like with our own credit cards, they have spending limits. How soon before the country has gone over the limits with all these countries and we can not barrow any more, than what do we do. Some of these countries we are getting money from are not our friends. It looks to me as if the government has sold every lock, stock and barrel of this county to others out side the country. When are they going to want to forclose on our coutry, just like our housing market is doing to use here and now. When are we going to take control of the counties spending or is it all going to fall apart and the country with it. Then were will we be. We will be out on the streets.
Dan & Deanna “Marketing Unscrambled”
England? So that doesn’t include Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, then (i.e, the rest of the UK?)
hahahahha that queen elizabeth picture is from the 20 canadian banknote.
Great presentation! I’m sending it far and wide. Average folks like me ‘get’ this. Good job!
Yes, those card are amazing. I think the Bank of China card is really the new not-yet-issued Wal-Mart credit card.
What amazes me more than the balances that are shown here are what was being spent by the country with these cards. Just like your oridinary household who ends up spending to buy a tv or a car the government seems to have spent most of it on superficial things like payroll and warfare rather than investing into alternative energies or some way to produce profit for our country to pay off that debt.
Than again it almosts feels like when you’re at the register in Macys and they’ll offer you a line of credit so that you’ll buy a shirt or two. Kind of like China issuing us an in house line of credit so we don’t stop buying their textiles and toys. Hoping the strength of our country will pay them back with interest.
Just like a typical family, just having debt isn’t the biggest issue. Its never good to have too much debt but $50,000 for a family is still repayable. People have this all the time.
The issue is when the family doesn’t have an income to pay the debt with. With all our service only jobs left in the US and offshoring and outsourcing everything else, we kind of ran out of work to do that will earn income to make the payments.
No one has mentioned that the Luxembourg card has a picture of the castle Neuschwanstein in the background – which is in Bavaria, Germany. Opps.
Oops indeed.
actually it’s not a castle from bavaria. that’s the ancient ‘capital’ building in luxembourg. oops!
Neither Neuschwanstein nor the “capital building (?)”.
It’s the castle of Vianden, around 30 km north east to Luxembourg City.
And, by the way: why can Luxembourg lend that much money to the States? Maybe because it’s a “socialist” country (compared to the US)….
That’s a fantastic visualization of all the credit card debt the US has. It’s disgusting to see how much we owe.
Maybe they should consolidate their “credit cards” into one, low-interest account! (Sorry, a little bit of industry humor.)
Doug
More interestingly, the PRC (Peoples’ Republic of China) credit card!?
Thanks for the illustration. About 2 years ago our family began to cut expenses and pay down our debt. We are getting close to a $0 credit card balance. It is hard to say no to yourself and family when it comes to things we want but if we had not begun 2 years ago, we would be in serious trouble now. Reduced pay and work hours would have forced us to chose what bill to pay. As it is we are near the end of our belt tightening and are getting ready to celebrate! This is the Rx for a healthy America!