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Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

> This is largely due to global trade being flat for the past 10 years

People are consuming more international goods and more domestic goods, so trade as a percentage of trade relative to GDP has stagnated, but not volume of trade. Since 2008, maritime trade has increased by 3 billion tons or 37% [1].

> Did you know that rent is part of GDP?

It's also a component of the inflation, so it cancels out. Housing is getting more expensive, but part of it is that we are consuming more of it than we used to. Home sizes have been growing, but household sizes have been falling [2].

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264117/tonnage-of-worldw...

[2] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-...

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The first source isn't really accessible unless you have an account. Total exports in terms of adjusted cost _has_ stagnated: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-trade-exports-const....

I suspect sheer maritime freight tonnage may be a less reliable proxy due to factors like cost of shipping changes, role of air freight, tariff changes, etc. Maybe share all the trade and globalization graphs instead? https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization

Your second source, hilariously, predates the entire pandemic (which is when home prices really took off). It also says very little to support your point that we're "consuming more" housing because home sizes are growing. The Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index seems to suggest that home prices were rising only modestly until the pandemic. https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/indicators/sp-core...

> Total exports in terms of adjusted cost _has_ stagnated

This doesn't seem to match what you'd get by multiplying their figures of inflation-adjusted GDP [1] with their figures of exports as a percentage of GDP [2].

> Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA

Home prices aren't factored into in either GDP or inflation because they're considered an asset. You're right that the economy has stagnated since the pandemic, especially in America. My point is that it's absurd to suggest that the global economy hasn't grown in the past decade.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-gdp-over-the-last-t... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-exports-gdp-c...

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