

Student Loans In US More Than China’s Total External Debt - newernpguy
http://statspotting.com/outstanding-student-loans-in-the-us-is-more-than-chinas-total-external-debt/

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cmsmith
New headline: My car loan is more than the net external debt of Norway (which
is negative).

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sliverstorm
Or how about the more straightforward: "Cherry-picking statistics for fun and
profit"

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seanmcdirmid
Well, as long as we don't want to talk about China's internal local government
debts...which is all coming out of our savings (hence...internal debt).

Sheesh.

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themgt
So the United States has built a society in which its (former) students owe
the government and large financial corporations more money than the government
of China owes the rest of the world. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but
it sure sounds self-destructive.

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nknighthb
It means absolutely nothing. As the first sentence of the article says, "a
comparison like that does not make any sense".

US student debt is ridiculous, but comparing it to the external debt of an
export-heavy sovereign doesn't help anyone's understanding. It only
perpetuates magical thinking.

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levosmetalo
The comparison is not done for the sake of drawing any conclusion about China
debt, it was just to "visualize" how big the debt is. I guess the author could
have compared it with the value of total beer production in the world in the
last decade, but comparing this debt with the debt of the biggest country in
the world gives better impression how big the debt is, at least to someone
that thinks there are to many zeroes there.

EDIT: s/depth/debt/g ;)

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nknighthb
The numbers are meaningless without context, and in context, the comparison is
meaningless. External debt can be huge or tiny.

Luxembourg, population 524,853, has 2.14 trillion in external debt, or >2.7
times China's. While China's per-capita external debt is just $396, to the
US's $52,170. Or how about Monaco, population 36,371, external debt, 16.5
billion.

You could add a couple more zeros by denominating the external debt in cents
instead of dollars, and comparing it to student debt in dollars, and it would
be exactly as useful.

