No, that's not how you should compare debts. Either show debt per capita or debt as a percentage of GDP. The shown chart is just misleading.
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
59 points (96.8% liked)
Europe
10869 readers
643 users here now
News and information from Europe πͺπΊ
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
If you believe a debt crisis in Albania is as bad as one for in the US for the world economy, then you are right.
I have neither said that nor do I believe that and I think you have misunderstood me. I criticise how data is presented in this chart. That's all.
Stick to tge criticism. The user is right
Does this coincide with their GDP overtaking that of the EU, as well?
Edit: I looked it up. The IMF says that in 2026, the EU has a GDP of $22.52 trillion and China has a GDP of $20.65 trillion. The US has a GDP of $31.82 trillion, for comparison.
Source: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/EU/CHN/USA
Source
IMF takes the GDP from whatever CCP is reporting fyi. Don't think it's been verified by accountants or independent parties or anyhting.
Well this is a fucking useless plot. And I say this as someone who isn't too fond of yanks. If the economy grew faster than the debt this means nothing, that's why usually absolute debt values are contextualised with metrics like GDP (which is shit) or annual growth.
Hm, ETFs usually grow by about 7-8 % historically. The US dept grew by 7,9 % historically. Is all the growth we see just money being borrowed?
Generally speaking debt to GDP is a good indicator for that. If you borrow money and invest it well, which for a governement means infrastructure and education spending(also has to be done well though), then your economy should grow faster then your debt. However there is a big issue here, in that some countries have their central banks print money and then buy government debt with that. When that happens that is basically just the government lending money to itself, so a big fat zero.
But a lot of US growth is debt fueld. Wars cost a lot of money after all.
Debt to who exactly?
For the US, only the state is debtor for the last years, while households, businesses, and foreigners are creditors.
The key word to search for "sectoral balances". I could not quickly find any good and recent data for the EU or China though. For Germany, state and foreigners are debtors, but that is probably not true for the whole EU.
The rich?
Jesus
National government debts are usually owed to a variety of domestic banks, private investors, and similar interests. I don't know about China for sure, but I've never seen anything indicating that it's different in this regard. Not much of it, as a proportion, is owed to foreign governments or investors. So far as I'm aware, the main unusual things about China's government debt is that Chinese citizens have a high savings rate (meaning banks holding those savings have more to work with as creditors) and the provincial governments have quite a lot of debt (potentially almost as much as the central government when added up, though I don't know where to get reliable numbers for this)
Chinese government owns their banks tho.
Money is only useful if people trust that they'll get what they expect for it. A government can make a nationalised bank take a decision like that, but who's going to use that currency if the government just snaps its fingers and makes 100 trillion yuan of everyone's money disappear?