The US has the largest economy by traditional GDP measures, but when adjustments are made to account for PPP, and the cost differences for similar products, it is China with the largest economy. (youtu.be)

submitted 4 days ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/economics@lemmy.ml

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[-] Flyberius@hexbear.net 8 points 4 days ago

Also GDP is stupid as shit when you consider that things like workers paying rent to their landlords increases GDP. That's just wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. No value has been created.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago

Exactly, or consider health insurance industry in the US which is a net negative for society.

[-] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 4 days ago

GDP in the US context is ridiculous. How much money is spent on DRM alone? From research and development to PR to legal to software development to hardware development to manufacturing. HDMI has DRM embedded in it, as do all devices that have an HDMI port.

And that's just to STOP the distribution of digital copies of media. It's literally ONLY negative productivity.

Then there's the IP-heavy sectors, which are predicated entirely on the artificial market created by the US IP regime, which includes tons of economic activity in litigation, lobbying, think tanking, and many people-intensive processes.

Then we've got an aggregate of billions in rebranding - fonts, colors, logos, slogans - which make brands indistinguishable from their former selves and each other.

And as Yog said, health insurance.

So many examples of billions just wasted.

this post was submitted on 20 May 2025

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