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By the way, some of the numbers posted in these threads are utterly fabricated. They always say they are from historical statistics, but only after they've been jimmied a lot with some phoney calculations. If you want to see the size of Reagan's debt per GNP, go to Historical Statistics of the United States. It's a very simple calculation.

'remember's numbers look legit.

Not according to the numbers I got from historical statistics. Gotta account for things in real dollars, which the U.S. government usually does.

Huck,

Pay no attention to LS. He may know something about history but he's severely challenged when it comes to math. My numbers come directly from Table 1.3 of the Historical Tables of the most recent U.S. Budget. You can see it on page 25 of the PDF version of the Historical Table at http://a255.g.akamaitech.net/7/255/2422/23feb20050900/www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy06/pdf/hist.pdf or in the XLS version of the table at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy06/sheets/hist01z3.xls. If you do a comparison, you'll see that my numbers are identical to those in the table.

I did notice in post 219 that LS said "look at the real dollars, as a share of GNP". As you can see from Table 1.3, such figures are usually shown in current dollars, real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, OR as a percentage of GDP. However, LS seems to be suggesting that you should correct the dollars for inflation AND compare them to the GNP. In fact, this is comparing apples to oranges. You would be comparing dollars that HAVE been adjusted for inflation to GNP numbers that HAVE NOT been adjusted for inflation.

In any case, this is easily settled. Ask LS to post his numbers and a source for those numbers (he isn't speaking to me). In fact, I doubt that he can even produce a table where real (inflation-adjusted) dollars are compared to nominal (non-adjusted) GNP. In any case, don't hold your breath waiting for him to provide a verifiable source.