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15% of US GDP is fake as acknowledged by the US gov BEA website (www.bea.gov)
submitted 11 months ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/us_news@lemmygrad.ml
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The concept is called “imputations” — which are “what if” scenarios.

Example: When a person buys a home, the gov adds that person’s imaginary rent to the GDP!

That is, if he didn’t buy a home, he would have spent X dollars on rent. There are two more shenanigans like that you can read in the article.

By this measure, China has already caught up with the US a long time ago.

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[-] DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Only 15%? Those are rookie numbers. They should be accounting for the what if scenario of every renter in the US renting 4 separate houses at once, and add that to GDP!

[-] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 11 months ago

That's no joke, though: the renter pays (1) their own rent (2) the landlord's mortgage (3) the landlord's rent and (4) the bank's owner's rent. I don't have the savvy to work out who lives off the renter's property taxes if they pay those.

this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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