Thank you. I’m not a fan of GDP. If you and I started crotch kicking businesses and paid each other $1,000,000 dollars to kick each other in the crotch, we just contributed $2,000,000 to the GDP with nothing of value created. My testicles hurt and your $PARTS hurt.
Exactly. You have a lot of funny money being passed around but that doesn’t mean anyone is making a living wage or if people are poor or not.
Cost of living and income are more important. In some states it’s cheap to live and you’re paid accordingly. Other states it’s expensive and you’re paid more but not always enough for the living.
GDP is fine to track things at a high level or national level but horrible for tracking how workers are doing
I even question the usefulness at high levels. It doesn’t measure how much wealth is produced. Say our GDP is 10 billion. Let’s say 2 billion is tshirts that suck and get thrown away. Next year we make tshirts that last 5 years and our GDP is 11 billion because they cost more. Year 3, it shrinks to 9 billion because we don’t have to make as many tshirts. We are better off in year 3 than year 1 by a billion, because we actually kept those shirts instead of tossing them.
I would like to see GDP numbers adjusted for useful production. E.g. since 40% of food is trashed, cut that portion of the GDP by 30% (we need some wiggle room so a bad crop doesn’t cause a famine)
I’m not an economist, as such I don’t understand all the nuances for gdp but it seems every time a dollar trades hands, it impacts the gdp.
The problem is a lot of its funny money.
We also base our budgets on gdp. As such it’s screwy as we spend like all of its being taxed.
Military is 3% gdp which doesn’t place us in the top 10 for spending. Yet on dollars we are the highest spender by far but we don’t collect enough to cover our debts.
I was going to say gdp isn’t a good metric. GDP is economic output and not really relevant.
I’d look at cost of living and wages.
Thank you. I’m not a fan of GDP. If you and I started crotch kicking businesses and paid each other $1,000,000 dollars to kick each other in the crotch, we just contributed $2,000,000 to the GDP with nothing of value created. My testicles hurt and your $PARTS hurt.
Exactly. You have a lot of funny money being passed around but that doesn’t mean anyone is making a living wage or if people are poor or not. Cost of living and income are more important. In some states it’s cheap to live and you’re paid accordingly. Other states it’s expensive and you’re paid more but not always enough for the living. GDP is fine to track things at a high level or national level but horrible for tracking how workers are doing
I even question the usefulness at high levels. It doesn’t measure how much wealth is produced. Say our GDP is 10 billion. Let’s say 2 billion is tshirts that suck and get thrown away. Next year we make tshirts that last 5 years and our GDP is 11 billion because they cost more. Year 3, it shrinks to 9 billion because we don’t have to make as many tshirts. We are better off in year 3 than year 1 by a billion, because we actually kept those shirts instead of tossing them.
I would like to see GDP numbers adjusted for useful production. E.g. since 40% of food is trashed, cut that portion of the GDP by 30% (we need some wiggle room so a bad crop doesn’t cause a famine)
I’m not an economist, as such I don’t understand all the nuances for gdp but it seems every time a dollar trades hands, it impacts the gdp.
The problem is a lot of its funny money.
We also base our budgets on gdp. As such it’s screwy as we spend like all of its being taxed.
Military is 3% gdp which doesn’t place us in the top 10 for spending. Yet on dollars we are the highest spender by far but we don’t collect enough to cover our debts.