As a stock trader for 20 years I learned very early in the game not to trust any government statistics. There's even a popular cliche that covers government reports: 'buy the rumour, sell the news.'
The US gdp isn't accurate because it includes what we spend on healthcare as well as the earnings of Wall Street none of which is actually creating wealth.
Those kinds of statistics have always been gamed. Ever heard of the "Paradox of Thrift"? Productivity and Efficiency work the same way. They unemploy people, and the exctra profit becomes savings. In the aggregate Savings (cash, the money we have) never gets spent. This must be true as long as the level of net savings increases or remains the same.
As a stock trader for 20 years I learned very early in the game not to trust any government statistics. There's even a popular cliche that covers government reports: 'buy the rumour, sell the news.'
It’s the New Math
The US gdp isn't accurate because it includes what we spend on healthcare as well as the earnings of Wall Street none of which is actually creating wealth.
Those kinds of statistics have always been gamed. Ever heard of the "Paradox of Thrift"? Productivity and Efficiency work the same way. They unemploy people, and the exctra profit becomes savings. In the aggregate Savings (cash, the money we have) never gets spent. This must be true as long as the level of net savings increases or remains the same.
You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all of the time.
Echos of Belousov‘s ‘beautiful reports’ line.
All is well.
Except for the fact that every single economic statistic is garbage!