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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

The measure is a poor construct. How much of GDP is Visa and Mastercard skimming 3% off the economy? Intuit charging for TurboTax. Healthcare. Collusion of institutional landlord rents using Yieldstar. Verisign. “Economic termites” as Matt Stoller coined.

US GDP, broadly speaking, is the broken window theory. Europe delivers better quality of life, cheaper, based on the objective metrics.

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

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Bobby Kennedy on GDP: https://youtu.be/aPgN_fSubKQ?feature=shared

Better said than I ever could have said it. Thank your for sharing, saving this.

GDP is what pays for healthcare, education and social welfare.

If those things aren’t important than yeah, it’s not the right measure.

The fact that you believe GDP pays for these things, and not that GDP reflects the spending demonstrates your uneducated opinion on the topic.

You don't think that GDP reflects national income, from which taxes are levied to pay for those things?

How do you think those things are paid for? Fairy dust?

And you call me uneducated?

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I’ve often had this question about GDP. Does the overpriced US healthcare system contribute to it? Not throwing shade, just genuinely curious about GDP’s value as a measure.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/07/healthcare-spending-will-b...

https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...

But that same thing can be said of the GDP in the EU, it's not different. Plenty of actors skimming money off the top, or just government regulations sucking a few percent of GDP here or there (which is likely much worse in the EU).

So you're still comparing like to like.

And your example of 3% "skimming" ignores that most of that fee gets kicked back to consumers.

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