Question for any economists reading this.

[randomness]

Are these numbers comparable?

General government consolidated gross debt as a percentage of GDP, from Eurostat.

versus

State and Local Government Spending and Debt in the United States, Amounts in percent GDP, from usgovernmentspending.com.

If they are not, can you suggest sources with comparable numbers, or explain why this isn't the right comparison to be making, etc.?

The basic point is that I'm trying to do direct comparisons of debt/GDP ratios between EU member states on the one hand and US states on the other.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was thinking more along the lines of paying people to move from country to country. That brain drain has been going on for centuries, though it may or may not need any pushing along.

As for the two problems you mention, both can be fixed by spending money--in the first case you could simply pay off their mortgages so they can move, and in the second you can pay for them to retrain--but it's an open question as to whether the cost is worth the benefit. And because the answer depends on the case, it's difficult to come up with an efficient global solution; individual answers won't scale.

Pushing along and guiding the global flow of talent into one's own country is another issue where there's a question as to cost vs. benefit, but then so many things are.

One of the issues I see in the American political system is that there's no particular incentive for acting when the cost is immediate but the benefit is long-term. In fact, there's usually a pretty big disincentive against action in those cases.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

It's easy to direct the flow of talent (human capital) into your country -- just ensure that the differential return on human capital is unusually high. That is, that income inequality is above the world average...