America’s $18T economy in perspective – comparing state GDPs to countries | Hacker News Reader

America’s $18T economy in perspective – comparing state GDPs to countries

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11 pointskjw12 comments

Even though productivity gains have been declining, I did not appreciate the gap illustrated by comparing California's output vs France and Texas vs Canada. (Per the WSJ, in the decade from 1994 to 2003, U.S. output per hour worked rose annually by an average 2.8%. Since then it has grown at 1.3%, including just 0.4% since 2011.)

> evidence of the world-class productivity of American workers.

This was repeated a couple of times. I think we get the point.

I'd rather keep my 30 days per year holiday and 35 hour work week to be honest.

Is there a gini co-efficient type thing useful in here somewhere? Churning out more cash with fewer workers might not be the best metric - France could reasonably respond with "work allows people to build a better life - we promote a quality of life philosophy. we are OK with that" still - that's a big as economy bro.

> France could reasonably respond with "work allows people to build a better life - we promote a quality of life philosophy. we are OK with that"

I wonder if all those unemployed people in France would agree with that.

Was speaking with a French professor, visiting us at the university for a couple of weeks. He was telling us about how the French public view Hollande's "liberalism" (in France, a "liberal" government prefers lax rules on business---in North America, the word "liberal" no longer has quite the same meaning), which lead to weakening of social service nets, as a major cause of the current unemployment (employment laws were made much more lax).

It seems intuitive to me that the more expensive and difficult a government makes it to hire and fire workers, the fewer workers businesses are going to hire.

Actually, businesses fired a lot of people after the government made it easier to fire people, especially for "out-source-able" positions.

Hmm, seems that your intuition is generally wrong.

Seems you believe correlation proves causation.

Rather, in the absence of personal experience, I choose to believe someone who is well educated and generally involved in the politics of the country they reside in, rather than coming up with my own fantasies to fit whatever agenda I want to push.

Do the French no longer believe that raising the cost of something will lower demand for it?

This comparison in dollar terms is quite incorrect. Just because France has lower GDP doesn't mean they have a lower quality of life. Also, just comparing number of workers misses the difference in number of working hours. Comparing GDP-PPP would have been a better approach.

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