• Rapidcreek@lemmy.worldOP
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    8 months ago

    GDP measures the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States (without double counting the intermediate goods and services used up to produce them). So, it doesn’t have a thing to do with your salary

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Workers are the ones that produce the goods and services. We made the economy grow, yet we aren’t the ones that see the direct benefits of this growth. Do you think this is fair?

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I think your first two sentences make a good point, but I also don’t think it’s fair to ask the question in your third when all the guy was doing was explaining the definition of GDP rather than making a value judgement about it.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          Well yeah, I asked the question to find out their position. It doesn’t read as neutral to me, but I’m biased, so I want to make sure.

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        I mean, more or less. When discussing GDP, you’re discussing things at such a massive scale that only the details of the details filter down. Like the speed of the Earth - obviously it matters, but no one living here is going to notice on their daily walk that the Earth has sped up or slowed down by 100 mph. It’s a tool (ideally) for discerning growth and potential courses of action for large-scale decision-makers, like the government.

        • Poggervania@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          But doesn’t GDP also take into consideration real estate and military spending, two things America very much spends dickloads of money on? In an ideal scenario, it would be an accurate measure, but because housing prices are so high and military spending is basically going infinite at this point in the US, you could argue it’s a worthless metric because of how inflated it can be.

          • PugJesus@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            Military spending isn’t that much higher as a percentage of GDP than it has been in the past. To increase the GDP by 3.3% by itself, the military budget would have to have over doubled in the last year. As much as we spend on the military, it has not doubled in the past year.

            Real estate is a larger part of the economy, but real estate price inflation still would only account for a small amount of that 3.3% increase in GDP. If we assumed 100% of the growth in the past year was pure greed and had no relation to actual supply and demand, it would still only account for under 1% of the 3.3% GDP increase. And as much as housing prices have increased due to greed, you would have to count me skeptical that it’s 100% corporate greed and 0% of the actual demands of the market.