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>> it would imply the standard of living is increasing. In USA, GDP includes the explosion of numbers of hospital admin staffers, energy prices doubled, and pr

• mrb 3y ago
  "That GDP does not increase my quality of life." I agree. As I said in my first post: "prices of goods [eg. healthcare] are inflated in the US compared to similar goods in the EU". So concretely, if healthcare prices increase in the US, but remain constant in the EU, this would increase the PPP GDP of the EU. What I meant to write is: if the PPP GDP increases in the EU faster than in the US, with all else being equal (eg. stable population) it would imply the standard of living is increasing faster in the EU than in the US.
  • dogma1138 3y ago
    GDP PPP in the US is identical to the nominal GDP in the US since the purchasing currency in the US is the US dollar. > What I meant to write is: if the PPP GDP increases in the EU faster than in the US, with all else being equal (eg. stable population) it would imply the standard of living is increasing faster in the EU than in the US. No it doesn’t mean anything of the sort in fact high nominal GDP to GDP PPP ratio usually indicates a low standard of living and a developing economy the Eurozone is an anomaly in this regard mainly due to its developed infrastructure and social institutions. And don’t forget that your GDP PPP can be twice that another county whilst your median income is can be 10 times lower. Median income per capita adjusted for PPP would be a better albeit an imperfect measurement of it since the standard of living is dependent on so many other things. In which case there are only 4 countries which have higher median income PPP than the US, UAE, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway. AIC/household final consumption expenditure is another good indicator for standard of living and wealth in which case the US is #1.
    • FredPret 3y ago
      US economic performance is all the more OP if you take into account that it's a huge country of 350m people and has a diversified economic base. For a tiny banking nation or petrostate to be rich is unsurprising. But when it's half a continent, the world really ought to take out their notebooks and go into full copycat mode - at least as far as economic policy and attitudes are concerned.
      • beebeepka 3y ago
        Are you suggesting the EU should start pillaging countries? What petrostate should we liberate to becone self-sufficient? As luck would have it, the US achieved that right after conquering Iraq
        • ffhhttt 3y ago
          Are you saying that the war in Iraq was in anyway profitable for the US? > As luck would have it, the US achieved that right after conquering Iraq Yes? A whole of of things happened back. I’m really not sure what are you implying here? Did they secretly ship Iraqi oil to the US and pretend it was extracted there? > What petrostate should we liberate to becone self-sufficient Uhm.. Libya? Or did everyone already forget that?
        • rootw0rm 3y ago
          I'd personally recommend liberating Venezuela
        • nvm0n1 3y ago
          The US is self-sufficient in oil because it developed the tech to do fracking of the oil sands, it's nothing to do with Iraq.
          • oblio 3y ago
            Europe could be self sufficient in oil and gas (we're constantly finding new reserves in EU/EU associated territory), it just doesn't want to dig those up because it's hugely destructive for the environment.
• nerdponx 3y ago
  Interestingly it probably does not increase the quality of life for most of those hospital employees either by all that much, except the very upper management.
  • ffhhttt 3y ago
    The gap between American doctors and those in some European countries is even higher than the one between software engineers.
    • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Because public healthcare systems dictate how much a doctor is to be paid and how much each procedure should cost, in the public system, which is why the public system keeps getting more bogged down as the sums the state allocates aren't keeping up with the increased inflation and demand, so more and more people need to rely on the private system.
      • lostlogin 3y ago
        And despite this, those socialised systems still have better outcomes per dollar spent.
        • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
          Maybe if you can stomach the waiting times but then the private medical sector wouldn't be growling so rapidly for procedure the state also does.
          • oblio 3y ago
            Anecdotally many people in Europe find waiting times comparable in the US and EU. Unless you have studies to back this up, I'd drop the waiting time argument.
            • 3y ago
• 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  This reminds me of an old "ad" (not sure it was ever placed anywhere) questioning a similar tendency [1]: > For years, economists have defined the economic health of a country by its gross domestic product. Trouble is, every time a forest falls, the GDP goes up. With every oil spill, the GDP goes up. Every time a cancer patient is diagnosed, the GDP goes up. Is this how we measure economic progress? Economists must learn to subtract. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q-lEATP-9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q-lEATP-9Y
  • dmurray 3y ago
    This is usually called the broken window fallacy, from an essay by Bastiat in 1850. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
    • Qwertious 3y ago
      More specifically, some valuable types of activities are not even measured in GDP - if you build your own table out of roadside scrap, then you might be immensely satisfied by the table, but it will contribute $0 to GDP. If you follow free instructions online (and look various stuff up on Wikipedia), that will again improve your life but not GDP.
      • sixstringtheory 3y ago
        I wonder how that kind of reclamation project could be valued in terms of avoidance of waste, avoidance of expenditure of new resources, and the skill development of the person doing the work (in terms of either/both faster pace of the same value created in future reclamations, and/or future marketability of the skills towards a saleable product).
        • dmurray 3y ago
          You could start by valuing it at the price someone would pay for it, plus the price the worker would have paid for that many hours of hands-on education. This isn't totally farfetched: in some countries if you own your house you pay tax on the rent you would have paid to yourself [0]. Taxing someone for feeding or educating himself seems like a small and natural next step. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imputed_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imputed_rent
• nostrademons 3y ago
  That's exactly what the PPP adjustment is supposed to capture. If a dollar buys half as much energy in the U.S. as the USD/EUR conversion does in Europe, that adjusts the EU PPP for the energy sector up by 2x. (Not exactly a great example, Europe has its own energy crisis.) I'm surprised at the number of people who are confidently arguing against mrb - they're exactly correct here. The point of PPP adjustments is to factor out the effect of having a strong currency, and the USD's status as reserve currency is exactly why the US GDP has been overtaking the EU. Adjust for what a dollar actually buys you domestically and the picture is far more muddled.
  • ffhhttt 3y ago
    > status as reserve currency is exactly why the US GDP has been overtaking the EU USD was the reserve currency in the 90s and mid 2000s. Back then the Euro was very strong and some large European countries were close to overtaking US in GDP per capita. The last 10 years have more or less been a lost decade in most of Western Europe because (amongst other things) it almost entirely missed out on the tech boom.
    • Cymrukicks 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • ffhhttt 3y ago
        > boom certainly not economically. I’m not that certain about this.
• JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > That GDP does not increase my quality of life It sure as hell does for the millions employed thereby, as well as those who catch their spending.
  • lostlogin 3y ago
    Most negative things have an upside for someone, that doesn’t mean you have to like it.
    • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      That’s my point. It wasn’t a comment about economic merit. OP just listed things they don’t like.
• blagie 3y ago
  It's an interesting argument. My feeling, completely based on spending a lot of time in the EU and the US is, and visited a lot of other countries: - In general, GDP PPP per capita correlates pretty well with quality-of-life. - In the case of US versus EU, it doesn't for this precise reason. The amount of GDP I need to be happy is decent food, housing, education, basic entertainment (e.g. a nice park with a free concert, or a pleasant beach), and medical. I get all of those in the (lower-income) EU country I normally visit, cheaply, and without much stress. $10k / year provides an adequate quality-of-life. That's not hard to make there, so people pick the careers they want. In the (high cost-of-living) area I spend time in the US, one needs around $150-200k / year to be stress-free. People do work like programming, biotech, law, finance, etc. to make it here.
• nocoiner 3y ago
  The energy position of the United States is just …. tremendously, tremendously sound. We’re a net exporter of hydrocarbons, have terrific renewable facilities in place, under development and untapped future potential, and have poured how many hundreds of billions of public and private capital into energy infrastructure in the past decade? Are you, like, talking about the cost of a gallon of gas or something? Because I can cherry pick whatever numbers you like to craft a reductive substance-free assertion about the state of the US energy production and distribution system. No argument on the hospital admins, tho (although it’s nice to have at least one in your social circle, so they can get you in with the top tier actual practitioners).