Difference Between Europe and the United States: Larger Transfer Payments

Please click on the graphs to view a bigger size.


This first graph shows the difference between European payments and European taxes paid received by all the member states.

(Where Duitsland=Germany, Belgie=Belgium, Nederland=Netherlands, Verenigd Koninkrijk=UK, Griekenland=Greece)

This next graph shows the same as the first graph, yet now for the United States. Please especially look at the difference in the scale of the graphs.

Created by Jessse Frederik 

Trends in Global Working Age Populations (1950-2100)

IMF published a rapport 'Africa Rising: Harnessing the Demographic Dividend' which contains a very interesting overview of the working age demographic history from 1950 and forecasts until 2100. Especially note the big rising trend for Africa and the downward trends for the West.

IMF

Total Debt (Public and Private) in the United States, Euro Zone, China, Japan and the U.K.

This graph shows the total debt (government, households and firms) for the biggest economies in the world. First, what I think is remarkable is that total debt is for the developing world (except Japan) all around 250 percent of GDP. Second, total debt did not decline since the crisis. In Japan and China (perhaps as expected) it is even rising again.

BBVA Research

United States Federal Deficit Graph

As you can see in the graph the U.S. federal deficit has not been this small since 2008. This might seem surprising since 2008 was the year with all the major bank failures. Yet it is quite likely that the (long lasting) recession of 2009 created a lot more costs for the government than those bank failures. The current recovery is seen in the outlays as well as in the revenues.

NY Times

Where is half of the U.S. economy produced?

With data produced by IHS Global Insight this graph shows where half of the United States economy is produced, namely in the metropolitan area's. Especially the east with New York, Boston and Washington contributed a relatively large share. 

Data

2013 United States Career Guide

Cedar Education Lending constructed this great inforgraphic with a lot of information about the current job market in the United States. Among other things, jobs with the best and the worst employment possibilities and highest and lowest ranking careers are described.

Lifehacker

Global Housing Market Update

This table from The Economist shows average house prices in Developed and Bric countries compared to their respective income and rent levels. House prices in Hong Kong, Canada and New Zealand are most overvalued. While house prices in Japan are highly undervalued. Also, the graph shows that Hong Kong saw the highest average price increase over the last year. The Netherlands had the biggest decline.

Due to a request by the Economist this graph has been removed. 

View the graph here

Projected Government Spending For Developed Countries in 2013

Denmark has the highest projected government spending as a percentage of GDP, with 58.4 percent. France and Austria also have notably high expentiture percentages, even above Noric countries Finland and Sweden. Greece doesn't have that high government spending after all with 48.3 it is around the average. Australia has the lowest government spending for the selected countries.

Banking Sector: Percentage of GDP Across the World

This chart shows the banking sector in terms of assets as a percentage of GDP forcseveral continents. What stands out, are the extremely large banking sectors in European countries.

ZeroHedge

OECD Direct Fiscal Costs of 2008 Financial Crisis

This chart shows the direct fiscal costs for the financial crisis in OECD countries between 2007 and 2009. Especially Ireland and also Iceland stand out as having relatively high costs in those years relating to the crisis. Notably the Netherlands is third and USA only comes in on the eight spot.

Unemployment Rate During Last Six Presidencies

The Wall Street Journal constructed this great overview of the unemployment rate under the last six presidents. After a big increase in the unemployment rate under Reagan, unemployment hit a record high of 11 percent, a structural decline set in. Despite cyclical increases, the unemployment rate decreased to 4-5 percent under Clinton and again under George W. Bush. Will the percentage of people of the job force without a job go to around 5 percent again?

Twitter

OECD Yearly 2012 GDP Growth

More and more countries have been reporting their fourth quarter GDP growth for 2012 lately, and hence the yearly 2012 GDP growth rate. For the countries that have reported their figures China had the highest yearly growth rate of 7.8 percent. Indonesia and Norway are following China with 6.2 and 3.0 percent respectively. Yet, most countries had a growth rate of less than 2 percent, with most all European countries on the lower end. Portugal and Italy saw their economy's decline the most, in Portugal even with 3.2 percent.

Changing Top Manufacturing Countries (1980-2010)

The developing countries have made their way more and more in the top 10 of global manufacturing countries. While you might expect China on the first spot, the United States as being the world's biggest economy is still the largest manufacturing producer. Brazil has advanced up to the sixth place. India just entered the top 10 in 2010 and Russia especially made a big jump from place 12 in 2000 to 11 in 2010.

ZeroHedge

Will Mexico Overtake China In U.S. Imports?

The Economist constructed this chart with data from the U.S. Department Of Commerce and HSBC. In 1990 China was still a small player in the international trade. Imports from the U.S. out of China were only 3.1 percent of the total U.S. imports. At the time Mexico was twice as big in the percentage of imports from the U.S. The biggest trading partners in terms of exports were Canada and Japan, both with a share of 18 percent. Especially Japan saw its share decline since the continuing crisis the country has been in from 1990. Today the import share that Japan has is lower than Mexico in 1990.

With the high economic growth in Japan before the 90s Japanese wages increased a lot. This gave opportunities to countries like China which at the time had an enormous potential cheap labor force to manufacture goods for exporting to the Western world. With the high economic growth in China wages are rising. Mexico seems the next country to benefit from low wages.

A likely reason why Canada is still a relatively big player is it's favorable location.

Due to a request by the Economist this graph has been removed. 

View the graph here

Fiscal Cliff: $607 Billion Automatic Budget Deficit Reduction

Reuters shows in this graph the reduction in the budget deficit that will take place automatically when Democrats and Republicans in Washington don't reach an agreement before the end of the year about how to avoid the fiscal cliff. The biggest part of the reduction comes from the Bush-era tax cuts that expire: 221 billion dollar. Payroll tax relief expiring (95 billion) is also a big tax increase. One of the budget cuts is that Emergency Unemployment benefits will expire.

Will Washington let this happen?

Reuters

U.S. Consumer Confidence on 5 Year High

U.S. consumer confidence increased to reach a five year high. Will this mean the consumer will spend more in the near future?

Credit Ratings, U.S., Japan and Euro Zone (Oct 2012)

Thompson Reuters created this graph with the long term sovereign debt ratings for the Western countries. For the three major credit rating institutions the ratings are listed.

Thompson Reuters

Share of World GDP Per Continent (1990-2010)

In the twenty years before 2010 China gained a lot of GDP. Since its GDP growth was a lot higher than in Europe and the United States it also gained in its share of World GDP. That is China's economy got bigger compared to Europe, United States and Japan. This is shown in the graph.

Conservable Economist

Labor As a Share of Total Income; Decling Trend in the U.S.

This graph shows the share of labor income in the United States as a share of total income. There are two sources of data for the labor income, the NIPA data and the BLS data. As you can see both data have been declining structurally since the beginning of the 2000's. Will this trend continue?

Lukas Daalder

Did the U.S. Job Market improve?

The U.S. job figures are presented in this graph. The unemployment finally edged under the famous 8 percent. Yet the participation rate (job force/potential job force) remained at a remarkable low rate and the average unemployment duration also still stayed at historically high levels.

(Update: today new figures were released. The jobless rate remained under the 8 percent: 7,9 percent.)

Reuters