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> I'll write a poem and sell it to you for $50 trillion and you draw a picture and I'll buy it for $50 trillion from you. We could get this done today and bump GDP by $100 trillion

Nominally, yes. Real, no. (In practice, given the barter resemblance of the trade, there would be no impact.)

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Why is it real GDP when a government contractor makes a PDF report, but isn't real GDP when I make a poem?

Because money paid to the government contractor results in a person (persons?) getting paid along the way and then a large part of that flows into the real economy via consumption / spending.

In your $50 trillion poem example, no money can possibly flow into the real economy because you simply do not have $50 trillion to pay anyone - you're just describing a wash trade of a worthless $50 trillion IOU note not unlike a NFT or crypto memecoin. Best case is that the poem is worth something non-negative.

That's the point.

GDPNow tracks real GDP.

Ah, thanks! Interesting. How does it know which is Real and which is poems?

Ask DOGE ;)

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