GDP isn't a good metric to compare household debt to. The US has an incredibly unequal society (see Gini index) and a lack of welfare compared to other Western countries. In aggregate, it means that debt is likely higher for households where that matters. The poor.

> GDP isn't a good metric to compare household debt to

It's a fantastic metric to compare aggregate debt to. It isn't the end of the story, which is why I also cited debt payments to disposable income.

American households are not, in aggregate, in a painful or even deteriorating position with respect to their debt. That doesn't mean many households, or even entire regions, e.g. West [1], aren't in pain.

[1] https://usafacts.org/articles/the-state-of-household-debt-in...

Disposable income as an aggregate doesn't show a income-level class (my point). Unfortunately having up to date information on economic status given the income level is hard to get.

One reason is that in aggregate it doesn’t matter all that much: The differences between US means and medians for household financial stats are substantial but not overwhelming—and more importantly in this context, largely trend together.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17Pem

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17Ped

If I am reading these graphs correctly, don't they support hikingsimulator's point? The mean has gone up but the median has gone down.

Oops: The mean one is in current (nominal) dollars. Here’s the inflation-adjusted version:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17PWA

It's not the technical poor that suffer the most in the US, it's the next block up, the low income working class.

The US has free healthcare for the bottom ~25%, including the poor. If you are in the low income working group, you're often largely out of luck. Those are the people suffering the most. They often don't qualify for EBT cards, they don't qualify for free healthcare, they don't qualify for housing subsidies, and so on.

The stats often don’t include benefits as income so it’s hard to really understand what’s going on.

“Free healthcare” in the form of Medicaid is a bit generous of a description for people under 65 and over 18. Few providers take it, and the benefits are really bad in many places.

How about both groups suffer far more than they should in any civilized, modern society. It’s not a contest which group is screwed over the most, let’s instead focus on why/how/what and solve.

Solid point. With inequality like it is, we really need to use metrics like median household debt and income to make any sort of meaningful conclusions.

What about debt to wages?

I think the issue that this metric doesn’t measure is that there are households with debt. And there are many that don’t even keep credit card debt.

So the metric to measure “working class burden” (or whatever) is the percent increase in consumer, non-housing debt for people who had debt.

Well off people who went from $0 credit card debt to $0 while having their networth double since 2020 (high gdp) are not very useful to predict bankruptcy or political upheaval like people who went from $5k to $40k in credit card debt, are renting so didn’t see their networth go up and had their wages increase 5-10%. Those people are having a really rough time. And are worse off now day to day, and have increased exposure to risky negative events.