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Comment by paulddraper | Hacker News Reader

GDP is not suffering — quite the opposite, 2% real annual growth in Q1 — so recession is definitionally inaccurate.

We’ll need new terms if Musk and Altman make infinity GDP and everyone else is unemployable.

More like Dario rather than Musk and Altman. Anthropic is much more likely to be a monopoly, and they are also pushing hard for regulatory capture with their whole false superiority on ethics, safety, morals etc.

How about "permanent underclass"?

Let's use percentage of people below the poverty line ( the actual poverty line is estimated between 97k(single) - 145k(family with children)

Anybody reading hackernews that cares about GDP growth is profoundly misinformed.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/income-needed-get-ahead-145k-ha...

As a Brit, it seems hilarious that a single person with an income of $97k would be on the poverty line. That's more than double the median income for all households in the UK. A lot of Americans don't seem to realise how fantastically wealthy they are compared to the rest of the world.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

That’s a completely absurd number. No single person making just under $100k a year is living in poverty. Even in a high cost of living area.

The article also repeatedly discussed median salaries, but average costs.

And it includes full time daycare costs for young children that only last for a few years.

Also housing prices are high but you can certainly afford an apartment as a single person making $100k a year. But if you want to save, having a roommate doesn’t mean you are living in poverty.

It's literally for a family of four requiring childcare. Do you know how much childcare costs? try reading the article

But they need to pay for college for their non-existent kids!!!

Sometimes these puff-pieces blow my mind.

It's more than most Americans make by a large margin.

Comparing countries can be relatively pointless because of all the differences. It only matters if you can obtain money in one country and spend it in another.

The main way these numbers are gamed is by finagling with healthcare and post-secondary education, each of which can be as high or as low as you want, depending on what you’re torturing the numbers to confess.

$97k per year isn’t that much when health insurance premiums are $500 to $1,500 per person per month with $5k to $15k annual out of pocket maximums. You have to build up decent savings to ensure you can take care of yourself for when you lose your income.

This doesn't look like too expensive if you compare it with Switzerland or with Germany assuming similar annual income. In Switzerland unlike in US your children stay on your plan until they turn 18, not 26 like in US. In both Germany and Switzerland, health insurance is mandatory and not employer-based - so you cannot simply say "no". In fact, in Germany you pay much more than in US as a share of your income, especially if your income is at least like 30% more than a national median: 1000+ EUR is a minimum per person per month (probably higher today). It doesn't cover dental care - you will pay in full - that's why many people travel to Turkey, or Eastern Europe, or to Baltic countries - just to take some dental care - which is extremely expensive in any German speaking country - we are talking about multiple months of your income after taxes.

“Not that much” and “living in poverty” are different.

Some people in some countries might consider not having access to healthcare (or worrying about it) as living in poverty.

Look at the reply to you above

> In both Germany and Switzerland, health insurance is mandatory and not employer-based - so you cannot simply say "no". In fact, in Germany you pay much more than in US as a share of your income, especially if your income is at least like 30% more than a national median: 1000+ EUR is a minimum per person per month (probably higher today). It doesn't cover dental care - you will pay in full - that's why many people travel to Turkey, or Eastern Europe, or to Baltic countries - just to take some dental care - which is extremely expensive in any German speaking country - we are talking about multiple months of your income after taxes.

By that definition someone making the equivalent of $100k in Germany could be “worried about healthcare”. And in many countries with public healthcare, people are worried about paying for access to better private healthcare.

So by the metric of “worrying about healthcare access” almost no one is above the poverty line.

There are people in the US making $100k who are genuinely worried about healthcare access. Say someone who retires early at 55 and has enough savings to provide $100k income but is 10 years away from Medicare. But acting like it is at all remotely normal for a single person making $100k to lack healthcare access or to be “living in poverty” by any objective measure is absurd.

2% is not the opposite of suffering. It's suffering-adjacent. It loses ground to China.

The US GDP per capita is still well ahead of China. The fact that China is catching up is not a problem for the US.

On its own terms, 2% isn't great. It's kind of the bare minimum. Anything less is losing ground in absolute terms, since that's the target for inflation as well.

That's also assuming the number is trustworthy. The number is a mediocre metric to start with, and I don't trust the administration to be calculating it correctly. They have shot the messenger more than once, after which the messages started to improve with no change in policy.

I would also not that China's numbers are even more opaque and less reliable.

To be clear, the 2% number was real growth, ie accounting for inflation

Ah. 2% real growth is fine. Not outstanding, but a reasonable level of gradual improvement for a developed economy.

China's sustained growth from a developing economy points to a bright future where they install more up to date infrastructure. The US is failing to keep up. But it's an investment it could choose to make any time... if it could focus.

GDP per Capita is average which is also misleading.

Real GDP growth in Q4 was 0.5%, so it’s a heck of a lot better than that.

2% is average for past decade+.

Sure but China had double digit numbers for decades. 2% doesn't cut it unless you want your grandkids speaking Mandarin.

China hasn't seen 10% GDP growth for 15 years. It will likely fall in the 4-5% range this year as it was last year. China has a self-inflicted population decline problem that the U.S. doesn't, which will weigh on China's future growth prospects.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

Are China's numbers accurate? They've clearly had huge growth over the past few decades but the economic statistics are heavily manipulated at all levels and the raw data is kept secret. Top-down external estimates generally put real growth rates a bit lower.

GDP can be misleading. Lots of things are double counted.

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