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Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling. The billionaires doing well masks everyone else struggling to afford g

Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling. The billionaires doing well masks everyone else struggling to afford groceries. In general, people are kind of calling BS on what the definition should be because we are all collectively feeling that things are doing poorly but no one is quite willing to recognize it due to the definitional stuff.

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling This is most GDP growth across human history until the Industrial Revolution with the exception of maybe a half dozen civilisations.
- alephnerd 8mo ago
  Even during the Industrial Revolution as well. And even the idealized vision of the 1950s-60s that is common on the Internet was itself a fantasy for a plurality of Americans until the Great Deal began sinking in. There was a period of slightly more income equality in the 1930s-1960s as Piketty [0] and Zucman [1] show, but this was also at the expense of racial and gender equality. The 1970s was probably the most equal period economically speaking as Zucman showed [1]. We should not strive to return to the 1950s - we should strive to be better than anytime previously. [0] - http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014FiguresTables.pdf http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014Fig... [1] - https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezZucman14slides.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezZucman14slides.pdf
- lovich 8mo ago
  What did your response have to do with your quote? We can have the most growth ever as a civilization and still have the common person lose out. The Industrial Revolution also famously had a lot of people pushed into impoverished situations while robber barons or the highland clearing lords won out, despite the GDP of those respective countries increasing.
  - s1artibartfast 7mo ago
    The connection is that GDP/Recession has never been about mainstreet or average joe. Recession is usually bad for Joe and mainstreat, but the opposite is not implied. It is ignorant to think it is or was defined by the average experience.
    - conductr 7mo ago
      I feel it’s also ignorant to think it shouldn’t be defined by that experience. Our metrics have been misleading or we just need better ones and/or possibly a new word for how average joe talks about “recession”. A purely academic definition that has no basis in reality seems pointless to me.
      - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > it’s also ignorant to think it shouldn’t be defined by that experience If defined rigorously, sure. But the literature is replete with measureas of downturns. What more commonly comes up in online discussions is some dude with a vibe, which isn't particularly useful for talking about anything larger in scale than that one dude.
      - s1artibartfast 7mo ago
        purely academic definistions have a tremendous number of purposes. Just as it would be silly to define a countries military equipment production capacity by public sentiment, the same is true for purely financial GDP. There are tons of metrics that can used to articulate how the economy feels for average joe. We have low consumer sentiment, lagging median income, GINI, opinion surveys, ect. Using the word "recession" adds gravitas by claiming something that isnt true.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > What did your response have to do with your quote? The notion that growth can be unequal is not something that has changed. The anomaly was the post-WWII eventide regime. That doesn't mean there is anything natural about unequal growth. But if we want to return to that previous mode, we have to first understand what it was. And what it was was anomalous.
compootr 8mo ago
gdp isn't and will never be a measure for social wellbeing. it's just economic output :)
- conductr 7mo ago
  I think that’s what’s changed though, as GP asked, people want to define recession as closer to the social wellbeing than a metric like gdp that is divorced
  - mr_00ff00 7mo ago
    Doesn’t this kinda create a problem though? Like a recession implies economic slowdown, but social wellbeing can decrease while the economy is fine. For example, a plague or severe weather might make the average person have a worse standard of living, but if the economy isn’t net affected, it seems wrong to say we are in a recession.
    - conductr 7mo ago
      Our vocabulary is too limited then. I know average people only use the word recession when things are compounding negative towards their personal finances / economics AND they feel like most people they know are dealing with the same. They don't claim it's a Katrina/Harvey/[any storm name] recession, they know the differences and that storm driven struggles are usually localized / temporary with a known amount of work to rebuild - average joe feels helpless in a macro-recession as it's only going to be solved in time and/or with help of politicians they don't trust. Plagues are a weird example, because I can't think of any situation where a plague would not affect the economy - and it should effect it negatively. I think COVID effected it negatively, we just chose to have a financial long COVID and drag out what should have been a financial disaster without all the government programs. Instead of economic collapse and starvation, we chose to massively spend money knowing it would be paid in time through inflation and also knowing it wouldn't get reallocated in an even way as pre-COVID. (That's my take, I don't know if there's any validity to it but it's just my gut feeling.)
ekjhgkejhgk 7mo ago
I asked what specifically has changed and you answered something else.

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago

> Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling This is most GDP growth across human history until the Industrial Revolution with the exception of maybe a half dozen civilisations.

alephnerd 8mo ago
Even during the Industrial Revolution as well. And even the idealized vision of the 1950s-60s that is common on the Internet was itself a fantasy for a plurality of Americans until the Great Deal began sinking in. There was a period of slightly more income equality in the 1930s-1960s as Piketty [0] and Zucman [1] show, but this was also at the expense of racial and gender equality. The 1970s was probably the most equal period economically speaking as Zucman showed [1]. We should not strive to return to the 1950s - we should strive to be better than anytime previously. [0] - http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014FiguresTables.pdf http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014Fig... [1] - https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezZucman14slides.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezZucman14slides.pdf
lovich 8mo ago
What did your response have to do with your quote? We can have the most growth ever as a civilization and still have the common person lose out. The Industrial Revolution also famously had a lot of people pushed into impoverished situations while robber barons or the highland clearing lords won out, despite the GDP of those respective countries increasing.
- s1artibartfast 7mo ago
  The connection is that GDP/Recession has never been about mainstreet or average joe. Recession is usually bad for Joe and mainstreat, but the opposite is not implied. It is ignorant to think it is or was defined by the average experience.
  - conductr 7mo ago
    I feel it’s also ignorant to think it shouldn’t be defined by that experience. Our metrics have been misleading or we just need better ones and/or possibly a new word for how average joe talks about “recession”. A purely academic definition that has no basis in reality seems pointless to me.
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > it’s also ignorant to think it shouldn’t be defined by that experience If defined rigorously, sure. But the literature is replete with measureas of downturns. What more commonly comes up in online discussions is some dude with a vibe, which isn't particularly useful for talking about anything larger in scale than that one dude.
    - s1artibartfast 7mo ago
      purely academic definistions have a tremendous number of purposes. Just as it would be silly to define a countries military equipment production capacity by public sentiment, the same is true for purely financial GDP. There are tons of metrics that can used to articulate how the economy feels for average joe. We have low consumer sentiment, lagging median income, GINI, opinion surveys, ect. Using the word "recession" adds gravitas by claiming something that isnt true.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > What did your response have to do with your quote? The notion that growth can be unequal is not something that has changed. The anomaly was the post-WWII eventide regime. That doesn't mean there is anything natural about unequal growth. But if we want to return to that previous mode, we have to first understand what it was. And what it was was anomalous.

compootr 8mo ago

gdp isn't and will never be a measure for social wellbeing. it's just economic output :)

conductr 7mo ago
I think that’s what’s changed though, as GP asked, people want to define recession as closer to the social wellbeing than a metric like gdp that is divorced
- mr_00ff00 7mo ago
  Doesn’t this kinda create a problem though? Like a recession implies economic slowdown, but social wellbeing can decrease while the economy is fine. For example, a plague or severe weather might make the average person have a worse standard of living, but if the economy isn’t net affected, it seems wrong to say we are in a recession.
  - conductr 7mo ago
    Our vocabulary is too limited then. I know average people only use the word recession when things are compounding negative towards their personal finances / economics AND they feel like most people they know are dealing with the same. They don't claim it's a Katrina/Harvey/[any storm name] recession, they know the differences and that storm driven struggles are usually localized / temporary with a known amount of work to rebuild - average joe feels helpless in a macro-recession as it's only going to be solved in time and/or with help of politicians they don't trust. Plagues are a weird example, because I can't think of any situation where a plague would not affect the economy - and it should effect it negatively. I think COVID effected it negatively, we just chose to have a financial long COVID and drag out what should have been a financial disaster without all the government programs. Instead of economic collapse and starvation, we chose to massively spend money knowing it would be paid in time through inflation and also knowing it wouldn't get reallocated in an even way as pre-COVID. (That's my take, I don't know if there's any validity to it but it's just my gut feeling.)

ekjhgkejhgk 7mo ago

I asked what specifically has changed and you answered something else.