I didn't think I could have less faith in the US, in terms of it being a country instead of literally just a bunch of rich psychopaths making shit up and killing people for money.
I was wrong. I was so wrong.
Similarly, the US economy is so highly financialised that nearly half of the stated GDP consists merely of book entries transferring money from one account to another, not in any way comparable to the real production of manufacturing or the provision of real services. When we remove the financialisation aspects from the accounts, the US real GDP is reduced by nearly 50% and the national per-capita income falls to about $15,000.
From the above, you can see that the size of a nation’s GDP can be largely irrelevant to the wealth and prosperity of that nation, and that comparing nations on GDP is fraught with difficulties and arguments. GDP used to be a simple measure of goods and services produced in a nation, and was probably an accurate indicator at some point in the past, but it gradually became a way to record the score in a game of ‘mine is bigger than yours’. So, in addition to the real issues outlined above, we also have the US constantly trying to move the goalposts to increase its score by finding ever more creative ways to boost the GDP numbers.
One clever trick by the US government is something called “imputed rent”, which means that if you own a house the government adds to the GDP the amount you would have had to pay in rent (but didn’t), on the mind-twisting basis that if you didn’t own that house you would have had to pay this rent. This one item alone added about $1.6 trillion, or 15% to the US GDP. Also, GDP is adjusted (downward) for inflation so, as you will see in a moment, the US badly understates its annual inflation rate which automatically inflates its GDP by about another $2.3 trillion, or about 20%. These two items alone mean the US GDP is falsely and artificially inflated by about 35%.
It's all fake. The longer you read the article, the more sanity points you lose. Absolutely everything economists pretend to be experts on: GDP, Per Capita Incomes, Inflation - it's all fucking made up. Absolute quackery. Absolute hokum. Absolute snake oil.
Every economist is a lying priest making shit up as they go along, all to explain why the God they call The Market has decided to punish you with poverty and reward absolute parasites with wealth.
I'd be able to stop time too if it weren't for the government holding me back!!