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Comment by alexb_ | Hacker News Reader

This is inflation adjusted.

Appreciate you fighting the good fight here, but this one is actually a valid point. If real GDP growth is at 4.9% while the government deficit is at 5.3% of GDP, (in most cases) GDP isn't actually growing organically.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S

That's not really how it works. US deficit spending isn't producing goods or services. It can motive the production thereof, but it doesn't change the fact that actual things were produced and then purchased using that money.

If people took 100% of the government deficit spending and left it in a savings account, it wouldn't count towards GDP. But clearly that's not happening.

No, it is really how it works, (as I caveated) most of the time.

I don't understand what you're arguing here. Is your claim that most of that government deficit was not spent in the domestic economy (therefore stimulating GDP growth)?

But deficit doesn't mean inflation.

Inflation metrics are gamed, it no longer includes major categories.

There are a lot of price indexes that all include different things. Have there been changes to what goes into particular indices?

It does though. Which "major categories" are you talking about?

Even inflation "truthers" truflation.com had to stop showing their chart of "true" inflation because it had dropped so much. Prices now are higher than they were 3 years ago, but continued inflation is not currently a problem.

Ain't it funny how the raw potatoes dug out of the ground are just as cheap as they were 5 years ago here in my state, while potato chips have doubled in price? Even the supermarket brand chips are still only a couple dollars.

That sound like "Inflation" to you? Steak is still $8/lb but my sugar free soda is suddenly twice as expensive

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