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[–] 55 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (13 children)

GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced in a country. A legal scam can hide as a service and get counted.

This is why cars are good for GDP but mass transit isn’t, because a lot more cost goes into a car than a bus on a per rider basis.

The same goes for health insurance. Simply paying a doctor for services is far less GDP than paying an insurance company who then pays the doctor after taking a cut.

Once you realize what GDP measures a lot of what countries do makes sense.

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  • [–] 28 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    if i burn down your house, the gdp grows, because lot of people now have work rebuilding it.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    So what you are saying is that billionarie houses having to be rebuilt after a fire would great for the GDP.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    Yup. But, that dollar changes hands far more times in the society with higher costs. That's a good thing, assuming costs don't dwarf income

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  • [+] 8 points 6 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Each time money moves: one trade happened. Someone bought, someone sold something. It's all activity. Money moving around fast: a lot of activity, people getting what they want. Money sitting still: stagnation, no work done, no production etc.

    That's the theory. Of course reality is a bit more complicated. People doing volunteer work is often net positive for humanity but won't show up in economic metrics.

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  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    There’s also the fact that a lot of those dollars moving are against people’s will or for stupid, inefficient reasons.

    If we each paid each other a thousand bucks an hour not to hit each other then that grows GDP without doing anything useful.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    But think about how much this could be taxed, this looks like zero-sum if you pay the same to me that I pay to you, but it is negative sum for us, and the government benefits from all the shuffling.

    Now it looks like another incentive to create inefficient meddling processes with extra steps.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    Every time I trim my head I remind myself Im stealing the gdp increase from the state and chuckles..

    Of course, I also chuckle when I burn sticks in the spring because Im burning faschists (from the latin word fasces) so my sense of humour is not very high

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