File talk:Debt to GDP Forecast Chart.png

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Is this a joke? Szeety (talk) 16:54, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's certainly not a forecast. As the GAO say themselves ([1], page 10), "simulations are not forecasts or predictions". The Citizen's Guide is a lot less careful in its language, and it might be misleading that it uses "will" rather than "would" for a hypothetical statement that begins on page 7: Without reform, federal debt held by the public [would] exceed the historical high of 109 percent of [annual] GDP in 2040 (and then be similar to the debt levels in Italy or Japan today). However, even the text on page 7 is careful to use "would" for after-2060 data.

I rather doubt that this image is either beneficial or necessary in such general articles as United States public debt: the past data is worrying enough without a rather crude exponential-growth curve pasted on to it, and while it is extremely difficult to make a projection right now, it certainly looks like 2008 will end up as quite a jump in the graph.

RandomP (talk) 12:16, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The 2007 Citizen's Guide, the source of this chart, is a joint effort of the GAO, Treasury Department, and OMB. This chart should be a major wakeup call for our Congress, but long-term challenges that are not imminent crises are hard to get them to act upon. Our long-term position is dangerous enough to where China has even recently (March 2009) warned us that our long-term problems must be addressed once this immediate crisis is handled. I've replaced this diagram in the U.S. Federal budget article, so it is represented in one of the two key articles on the topic.Farcaster (talk) 03:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, this is a highly disingenuous graph. It's report is showing what would happen if the *2006* Bush administration spending trend during two wars and granting of large tax cuts were to continue. It does not reflect that these were temporary trends, and that the US is not expected to be involved in two wars for the next seventy years. This information is subtracted from the graph, and it is presented as if it were an expected trend, rather than a theoretical extended trend of temporary high spending and low taxation.

*Any* graph that extends a very short term trend for 70 years is highly suspect. Especially if it takes a sudden upturn twenty years out for no disclosed reason. That wouldn't be expected even if it was extrapolating a long term trend rather than a short term one.

Additionally, I'm concerned over the copyright claim, since this is *not* the graph from the GAO report, but a new different version.

I'm bordering on filing this at WP:FFD as patent nonsense. --Barberio (talk) 10:19, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Szeety on this. The graph seems completely unsupported (even within GAO), and certainly not encyclopedic material - worse I think it gives off an expression that it IS a forecast - when it is not; which adds bias to any article that includes the chart. For this reason I don't think this kind of content belongs on Wikipedia. From my professional economic experience, it's practically impossible to predict this type of economics as far in advance as 2080, even as far as 2050 is often considered a stretch. Even from GAO - this is not consistent and now out-dated. See figure 2. [2] Unless someone can provide some legitimate reason why this graph maintains any encyclopedic value I'm going to nominate for deletion. Aeonx (talk) 13:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]