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Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

timharford.com

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Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#81

Post by 9rx »

Zigurd wrote: post #80
mschuster91 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably for the same reason you hear people say things like "How can inflation only be 2%? I am spending 10% more. We need to redefine inflation!" The question if the goods basket that is used to define inflation actually reflects reality is valid though! For example, the explosion of rents in urban areas is offset by shockingly low rents in "flyover states" and rural areas, leading to a complete neglect of the…

two things about that: First, employers do take local cost of living into account to set pay, some implicitly due to competition, but many of them explicitly adjust wages based on cost of living data from economists. Secondly your complaint about the wrong KPIs rests in part on conflating cost of living with inflation. The problem the Democrats face is that wage prospects and social issues are segmented by level of e…

> The problem the Democrats face is that wage prospects and social issues are segmented by level of education more than in the past.

But that's just because more people typically seek higher levels of educational attainment than in the past, so the more capable people filter upward.

In my grandfather's day, even going to high school was relatively unusual. Back then, the "less than high school" cohort was a healthy mix ranging from those with extreme disabilities to high performing people. Nowadays, there are often even legal mandates that require anyone who is capable to graduate from high school. So, the "less than high school" cohort is now effectively only those with extreme disabilities, with all the life challenges that go along with that. As such, if you only glance at the data you might think that lower levels of education have fallen behind, but in reality they've just lost the people that helped make it look better than it really was for those who struggle.

That doesn't seem like it should be a problem. Only the counting has changed, which isn't materially significant.

I suppose what you are trying to say is that said shift has revealed how bad things have always been for the disabled, and Democrats are called upon to fix the issue making it their problem, whereas it is understood that the Republicans are always of the "fuck the disabled" mind so nobody expects them to deal with it?

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#82

Post by drcongo »

smeeth wrote: post #52

Elon is definitely wrong. The author seems to be advocating running the economy on vibes, however. > The real problem with GDP ... is that it tempts us to view all human progress as an amorphous score, which we can start maximising just as soon as we fix whatever we think is wrong with how that score is calculated. No! The problem with GDP isn't that it's a score, it's that it's a BAD score. We know whats wrong with…

Out of interest, are you familiar with Tim Harford?

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#83

Post by vonzepp »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #61
vonzepp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another note worth considering is that state and companies have different roles. Take NASA vs SpaceX. SpaceX launches cheaper rockets. But NASA for example does alot of its work in Alabama, which is supporting a poor regions econonmy and its communities. It might be more optimal to do this in Silicon Valley, or even China but as a government organisation this is part of it's remit. Like wise space science for the pur…

which I see alot, misses alot of the purpose of the spending NASA's remit isn't to be a jobs program or to provide a social safety net.

NASA is a government agency and as a government agency it is used as a vehicle to implement the general purpose of the government.

To put a different example of the point. If the cheapest way to launch items into space was for NASA to buy rockets off Russia, would that be what it would do? No, because government policy includes independent launch capacity.

NASA isn't a private company, it is a tool of government and as such it can have have a wider role in society then a compariable private company will have.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#84

Post by spwa4 »

heisgone wrote: post #10

There is certainly a usefulness in separating government spending and private spending in our economic health measures. For one, measures like GDP are often used to evaluate the confidence and the general well-being of our economy. High Government spending tend to indicate the opposite, as Keynesian economics would mandate. More so, it invite manupulation of those measures by politicians, who can increase deficits to…

The whole point of using economic metrics like GDP is that they are NOT politicized. You can argue to what extent that succeeded. Probably not 100%.

But your suggestion is to increase politicization of GDP: change the figure to push a certain view on economic activity, as opposed to what the theory says, what's practical, and what actually happens in real life (even if the government pays a group of people to dig a hole, and another group to fill the hole back up, that's still economic activity and should be counted).

That's moving things entirely in the wrong direction.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#85

Post by spwa4 »

matwood wrote: post #30
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah this can be simplified to just elon is wrong and that covers the majority

...or is lying covers most of what he says.

He's a plagiarist, a fraud: he claims other's work as his own, and that goes from extremely petty to very large lies. From Fraudulently claiming he's good at "Path Of Exile" to him being Tesla's designer, to him having designed the SpaceX rocket engines.

In all cases research has found: he's lying. He has essentially no technical contributions, not even to his original firm, X (the bank).

Him claiming otherwise makes him a fraud, and a plagiarist.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#86

Post by smeeth »

drcongo wrote: post #82
smeeth wrote: post #52

Elon is definitely wrong. The author seems to be advocating running the economy on vibes, however. > The real problem with GDP ... is that it tempts us to view all human progress as an amorphous score, which we can start maximising just as soon as we fix whatever we think is wrong with how that score is calculated. No! The problem with GDP isn't that it's a score, it's that it's a BAD score. We know whats wrong with…

Out of interest, are you familiar with Tim Harford?

No (likely because American).

It's entirely possible my interpretation of his opinion of GDP is totally off, but that's what I gleaned from this single article. If I'm wrong, it's at least a bit his fault.

Do you have an opinion you'd like to share?

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#87

Post by butlike »

M3L0NM4N wrote: post #26
axegon_ wrote: post #21

> "elon is wrong about {X}" People are (very) slowly waking up. The number of X-es is large to say the least.

As one of Elon's ex-fan's (or at least had a generally positive opinion of him) like I suspect many of us here once were, it is astonishing how consistently wrong and ignorant he has been, and it has gotten worse year over year. I think there is a legitimate possibility he fried/is frying his brain on Ketamine.

Does he ACTUALLY take ketamine or is he more on the spectrum anyone will admit?

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#88

Post by mschuster91 »

9rx wrote: post #71
mschuster91 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably for the same reason you hear people say things like "How can inflation only be 2%? I am spending 10% more. We need to redefine inflation!" The question if the goods basket that is used to define inflation actually reflects reality is valid though! For example, the explosion of rents in urban areas is offset by shockingly low rents in "flyover states" and rural areas, leading to a complete neglect of the…

> The question if the goods basket that is used to define inflation actually reflects reality is valid though! Why? You're only trying to determine the change in value of the currency. What specific items are in the basket shouldn't matter all that much as long as it is a broad enough sample to be able to separate out the change in value of the goods from the change in value of the currency, along with it being compr…

> Implying that an urban dollar isn't the same as a rural dollar?

The same dollar buys me a lot more food and accomodation in rural areas. To give you an example, average rent for 60 m² in Munich will easily run to 1200-1500€ a month, and that's net (so you got to add heating and utilities on top). In Eastern Germany, you can get 80 m² for 300€ a month. A trip to the grocery store is about 100€ in Munich, maybe 50-60€ in Eastern Germany, simply because the staff and rent cost of the grocery store are also much lower than in Munich.

Unfortunately, collective wage agreements, UI benefits and pensions are federally the same across Germany - that means for example the train driver in Munich barely scrapes by because cost of living eats >50% of his paycheck while the train driver in Eastern Germany lives like a king.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#89

Post by rsynnott »

chollida1 wrote: post #5

I've talked to a few economists about this and non agree with Elon on this. The biggest issue one person raised is how do you separate out government spending form GDP? If a US town has a big military base, does that mean the entire towns' GDP is just government spending so ignore it? The government essentially pays for everyone's salary in the town. Where do you draw the line at what is government spending and priva…

> I've talked to a few economists about this and non agree with Elon on this.

Well, I mean, yeah. If you talk to a few astrophysicists, you're fairly unlikely to find one who agrees that the earth is flat and that the stars are LEDs in the earth's roof. Like, it's a fairly fringe idea.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#90

Post by rsynnott »

M3L0NM4N wrote: post #26
axegon_ wrote: post #21

> "elon is wrong about {X}" People are (very) slowly waking up. The number of X-es is large to say the least.

As one of Elon's ex-fan's (or at least had a generally positive opinion of him) like I suspect many of us here once were, it is astonishing how consistently wrong and ignorant he has been, and it has gotten worse year over year. I think there is a legitimate possibility he fried/is frying his brain on Ketamine.

As someone who's never been an Elon fan, nah, he's been fairly consistently confused about basically everything for as long as he's been a public figure, but his fans were willing to turn a blind eye to a certain point, because they found his stuff aesthetically appealing.
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