"...In a Financial Times op-ed dated July 25, Laurence Kotlikoff, economics professor at Boston University, contends due to the “labeling problem”--governments can describe receipts and payments in any way they like--we are essentially “in a fiscal wonderland of measurement without meaning.”
Kotlikoff believes a better benchmark of fiscal fitness is the fiscal gap, or the present value difference between all future expenditures and receipts. His calculations reveal Greece future expenditure at 11.5% of the value of future GDP, after incorporating the new austerity measures.
The US figure, based on the CBO projections--12.2%--is worse than that of Greece, but not by too much.
However, Kotlikoff says the U.S. is in much worse shape than the 12.2% figure suggests, because the CBO’s projections assume “a 7.2% of GDP belt-tightening by 2020,” with "highly speculative” assumptions, such as a substantial rise in tax receipts and wage growth.
A separate analysis by the New York Times also put the U.S. debt--measured by medium term deficit as a percentage of GDP--higher than that of Greece..."
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