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Comment by jahnu | Hacker News Reader

Given recent news* does that mean light at night could be used to measure US economic growth this year?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-commissioner-of-lab...

Did it with https://sites.google.com/site/jiaxiongyao16/nighttime-lights...

USA (2013-2023 CAGR: 2.3%) 2014: 6.2% 2015: -5.3% 2016: -1.8% 2017: 15.2% 2018: -4.9% 2019: 4.5% 2020: -5.4% 2021: 6.7% 2022: 14.5% 2023: -3.6%

China (2013-2023 CAGR 7.9%) 2014: -1.7% 2015: -1.2% 2016: -5.1% 2017: 53.3% 2018: -1.0% 2019: 7.5% 2020: 6.5% 2021: 11.4% 2022: 4.2% 2023: 10.8%

Individual yearly number are unlikely to be useful. Likely you can only predict long term trends with the help of fits.

Wow, 2017 was a good year

That "feels about right" IMO

Well, how does it compare with published numbers?

You can rely on a better source : https://institute.bankofamerica.com/economic-insights/consum...

Sure, but for how much longer before our private institutions succumb to the same intimidation tactics?

The Rich would stage a coup before losing access to accurate economic information

The rich would pay handsomely to tilt the playing field by locking up good information. There is profit in being an insider.

There is no sign that "the Rich" will even be smart enough to understand that you can't placate the orange buffoon over a meaningful period. They keep paying him other people's money and throwing their staff under the bus. I'm sure they'll be angry when he demands their money and chucks them under the bus but that's too late isn't it?

You think they weren't already juicing the numbers up or down based on whatever they or their business partners favored?

It feels like it is something that could show broad long term accuracy over say a decade but short term the noise level would make it difficult to extract a signal.

Even then I would guess there would be a lot of other leading signals than lighting that would also correlate.

I think in a highly financialised free market like the US the executive is pretty powerless to really hide important economic data like this, even within their own country.

There would be so much alpha in knowing stuff like the true employment rate that private agencies will be extremely well-funded to collect this data (in fact this probably already happens for some data, there might be alpha in having a second opinion even if you think the government data is trustworthy).

I think the worst-case outcome would be that the mass populace doesn't have access to the info because it's paywalled. But to the extent that journalism continues to exist, journalists will know the employment rate, GDP, that kinda stuff.

Money is a proxy for power, but it doesn't have to be so. If you lose money but gain a cult following, is that positive or negative alpha?

Light at night would overstate success for the incumbent US population actually. Since (contrary to popular belief) we're significantly less nationalistic than these other countries and have a much larger and more successful migrant population.

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