The "Truth In Accounting" website claims that the US has $123 trillion of debt, if "unfunded liabilities" are taken into account. Is there a global ranking of states based on such unfunded liabilities?
Ekadh Singh - Reinstate Monica
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asked Jun 14, 2021 at 5:49
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I don't think one exists, precisely because they are unfunded, which means there haven't been any funds allocated for these liabilities, so there probably aren't any official figures. But you shouldn't need to worry about these liabilities too much, unless you plan to rely on them for your survival in the future, experience from Greece and elsewhere showed that these liabilities are easy to rollback, and are the first to go away when the money in the system runs out.– user000001Jun 14, 2021 at 10:19
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@user000001 I’m not worried, just curious to see which countries made the most outrageous promises about future payouts.– JonathanReezJun 14, 2021 at 10:23
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2If you look at the absolute amount, the US is sure to come out number 1 simply because of the size of its economy. Looking at it relative to population or to GDP would be much more interesting.– quaragueJun 14, 2021 at 11:21
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It appears that the definition of "unfunded liabilities" includes Medicare and Social Security, both of which are fairly US-specific in their implementation. On the other hand, that site appears to "conveniently" leave out deferred taxes, e.g. on 401k programs. I suspect these two effects combined make it virtually impossible to do an objective comparison. Having said that, I suspect Italy and Japan are worse off in practice.– MSaltersJun 15, 2021 at 10:25
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