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Re: Debt - Playing with the Curve(s) of Best Fit again...

By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Tue, 23 Apr 24 9:13 AM | 20 view(s)
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Msg. 52641 of 52856
(This msg. is a reply to 52640 by De_Composed)

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One more point. If I went all the way back to the start of my data, 1929, and drew a curve of best fit, it buys some additional time. However, you can see in the chart below how poor the "fit" is (the black line.) I could have futzed around with ellipses all day and I never would have found a good fit. I interpret this to mean that the national debt back then didn't grow on the same curve that it's on today. There is no 1929 curve of best fit that does a good job of simulating the next 95 years. And that makes sense: Something extreme happened between 1965 and 1975 that should have shifted the curve - the U.S. completely abandoned the gold standard. That freed the country to grow its debt as quickly as it wished. Harnesses removed, it went nuts.



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The above is a reply to the following message:
Debt - Playing with the Curve(s) of Best Fit again...
By: De_Composed
in 6TH POPE
Tue, 23 Apr 24 8:32 AM
Msg. 52640 of 52856

I obtained National Debt numbers from 1929 to 2023 and threw them into a spreadsheet in order to play around with them some more. The two images, below, are derived from those numbers and show the same thing... but the second is zoomed in to emphasize what matters, the lower right side of each ellipse. The first image does a better job of showing what I mean when I say I drew ellipses to find the curves of best fit.

FYI, 39 on the X-axis represents 1965. 49 represents 1975. 95 represents 2023. I was too lazy to label the axes properly so you're getting the default labels.

On the two charts, red represents the debt. Green is the curve of best fit if I start in 1965. Purple is the curve of best fit if I start in 1975. All you need to take away from that is that green starts ten years earlier than purple. The two lead to practically the same conclusion... that the debt is extremely close right now to turning vertical. That's the point at which infinite additional dollars will be needed to stay on a curve that the United States has been on for so many decades. I still think we're looking at 2 to 5 years before that happens. I'm not going to pin it down more than that. I only eyeballed things, after all, and therefore acknowledge that my images and estimates aren't perfect.


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