3 ms·

Yet Germany is the 4th largest economy in the entire world with a GDP of near 4 trillion US dollars, despite being a country of only 83 million people (only the

Yet Germany is the 4th largest economy in the entire world with a GDP of near 4 trillion US dollars, despite being a country of only 83 million people (only the 19th largest country in world). Perhaps the Germans have figured out how to work smarter, not harder...

atwood22 4y ago
U.S. productivity is higher than Germany (outputs / inputs), so it appears Germany hasn’t quite figured out how to worker smarter than people in the U.S.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Yeah, but how much of the value that this is based on is artificially inflated, either by outright bullshit such as HFT and other forms of "wealth" that are solely created out of numbers or to account for indirect bullshit such as absurd healthcare and rent costs that drive up wages and, indirectly, product prices?
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > artificially inflated a huge chunk of that is excessive healthcare costs https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expenditure-as-percent-of-gdp-since-1960/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expendi...
    - corrral 4y ago
      Yup. My back-of-envelope from past looks at this is that 5-10% of US GDP is purely drag from excess healthcare costs, i.e. we'd collectively be better off and our economy (entrepreneurship, especially) healthier if that amount of our GDP simply vanished, even though it would mean lower GDP per capita. There's a quote from Obama in an article from The Nation years ago, that basically says we can't fix our healthcare system properly because it would put too many (white-collar make-work jobs program participants, essentially, under our current system) people out of work.
filmgirlcw 4y ago
OK, but the state of California is the fifth largest economy in the entire world ($3.4T USD) and has less than half the population of Germany. Arguments like this are pointless.

atwood22 4y ago

U.S. productivity is higher than Germany (outputs / inputs), so it appears Germany hasn’t quite figured out how to worker smarter than people in the U.S.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 4y ago
Yeah, but how much of the value that this is based on is artificially inflated, either by outright bullshit such as HFT and other forms of "wealth" that are solely created out of numbers or to account for indirect bullshit such as absurd healthcare and rent costs that drive up wages and, indirectly, product prices?
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > artificially inflated a huge chunk of that is excessive healthcare costs https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expenditure-as-percent-of-gdp-since-1960/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expendi...
  - corrral 4y ago
    Yup. My back-of-envelope from past looks at this is that 5-10% of US GDP is purely drag from excess healthcare costs, i.e. we'd collectively be better off and our economy (entrepreneurship, especially) healthier if that amount of our GDP simply vanished, even though it would mean lower GDP per capita. There's a quote from Obama in an article from The Nation years ago, that basically says we can't fix our healthcare system properly because it would put too many (white-collar make-work jobs program participants, essentially, under our current system) people out of work.

filmgirlcw 4y ago

OK, but the state of California is the fifth largest economy in the entire world ($3.4T USD) and has less than half the population of Germany. Arguments like this are pointless.