

U.S. Consumer Debt / U.S. Population = $43,100 per person - vlucas
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=u.s.+consumer+debt+/+pop.+u.s.

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bugsy
That's not the consumer debt figure. Consumer debt, which is credit cards and
other unsecured, mostly high interest debt, is $2399 billion.

[http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/current/default.h...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/current/default.htm)

That comes to $2399 billion / 307 million people = $7814 per person.

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kevin_morrill
Sounds a bit more accurate, but pretty much just as scary. If you add in your
share of the national debt, it gets really scary. Politicians likely won't
have the backbone to deal with making cuts/raising taxes so the likely outcome
is sustained inflation.

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TomOfTTB
Just to give the full number the average Californian owes $132,655 with
National Debt, State Debt and Consumer Debt (including mortgage, car, etc...)

U.S. Debt: <http://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html>

California Debt:[http://www.usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clocks/state-of-
califo...](http://www.usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clocks/state-of-california-
debt-clock.html)

Consumer Debt: [http://www.youngmoney.com/get_out_of_debt/california-
leads-n...](http://www.youngmoney.com/get_out_of_debt/california-leads-nation-
in-consumer-debt/)

(Though that doesn't include the estimated $1,012,540 per citizen in unfunded
liabilities)

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rbranson
Let's not conflate "unfunded liabilities" with actual current debt load
though. While both dollar figures, they are wildly different in nature.

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kevin_morrill
Yes, but when Social Security money suddenly doesn't show up for a whole
generation of people depending on it to retire, and in many cases no longer
able bodied to work, the turmoil will be plenty upsetting.

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simon_
This has to be mostly mortgages, which makes it a little misleading.

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yummyfajitas
Why is it misleading?

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rdl
Generally, mortgages are an amount less than an asset someone has. It would be
kind of absurd to consider a person with a $500k house and $50k in outstanding
mortgage to be worse off than a person with $0. Mortgages also generally
(depending on the state) are non-recourse; if your mortgage is for more than
the property is worth, you can hand in your keys and walk off with no
additional liability.

I agree from a cashflow perspective, a mortgage even if you have substantial
equity can be bad, but most people don't get into debt trouble from mortgages,
unless they got some kind of absurd mortgages for close to the value of the
property, resetting ARMs, and fundamentally have more house than they
otherwise would have purchased. True, a lot of people did this, but it's a
historical anomaly.

But I'm sure you knew all that and were just trying to make a point :)

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yummyfajitas
So it's misleading because they listed debt rather than net worth? I'm not
sure "misleading" is the right term - I'd use "a correct number, properly
labelled, but which answers a different question than the question rdl wants
answered".

Incidentally, I'm not sure why mortgage debt is more misleading than other
debt. If I have $500k in the bank but owe $50k on an auto loan or credit card,
is that somehow worse than owning a $500k house with $50k mortgage debt?

As for the call-option nature of loans, that only applies in a few states
(admittedly including CA and TX), and only to some loans (mostly only the
first loan). While you are probably right that some mortgages should be
excluded for this reason, I'd be surprised if they were the majority.

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jhamburger
The reason mortgage debt is better is because the asset borrowed tends to
appreciate (although obviously not in the past 5 years) whereas with a car
loan or credit card the asset(s) depreciate quite rapidly, on top of the fact
that the interest is much higher and not tax deductible.

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TomOfTTB
I actually think this is an incorrectly attributed number.

If you multiply $43,100 * 300 Million people (remember the population number
is 2008) you get around $12.9 Trillion dollars. That's around where the
National Debt Clock would have been in Q3 2010 (<http://www.usdebtclock.org/>)

So this is each U.S. citizen's share of the U.S. National debt not Consumer
Debt

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KirinDave
I was a bit disappointed that when I changed the "s" to "k" (and tried
variations on that theme), Wolfram didn't have the answer.

I want to like WA, but I feel like its data is so sparse and often spiked just
for demos like this. I'd really love to use WA to do a consumer debt
comparison for the western world, but they don't ingest most other country
data.

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andrewparker
Is there an investment opportunity around this number?

For example, $43,100 in consumer debt per capita seems totally unsustainable,
and one way it might get corrected is through very high inflation, which would
make our past debt more reasonable by comparison. So investments that perform
well in inflationary periods would make sense... Other ideas?

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MaysonL
Given that the number is incorrect, basing investment strategy on it would not
be the wisest idea around.

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jaekwon
Is it even possible to bring this figure down to $0?

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JshWright
My economics study ended in high school, but I doubt it would be beneficial to
bring it down to $0.

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jonhendry
For comparison: US GDP per capita is roughly $46,000.

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chailatte
Pretty sure we can keep spending money on Zynga/iphone games just a little bit
longer....before we can't afford food/gas.

