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Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

timharford.com

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Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#111

Post by smeeth »

drcongo wrote: post #103
smeeth wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sorry, missed your reply. He's quite a well respected economist, and also presenter of the Pushkin podcast Cautionary Tales along with a lot of economics adjacent stuff for BBC radio and TV. Didn't mean for my question to sound snarky but on reflection I think it does, so sorry about that.

Not at all, even if there was snark intended I think its a fair question.

I resisted ranting about it (I hope you'll indulge me now), but in general I don't much like the economics commentariat. As best I can tell, "respectability" seems to mean something like "modal economic views + left of center politics." There are of course some exceptions, e.g. occasionally the economist or WSJ, but it leads to some notable blind spots.

For example, Switzerland experienced mild deflation in a good economy 2012-2017, but it wasn't until 2023 or so that articles started coming out that questioned where the 2% inflation target came from [0] and whether deflation could ever be a good thing [1]. This was despite respectable research from at least 2004 that explored the possibility of "good" deflation [2].

Tim, like many in the commentariat, was writing about inflation in 2019 [3]. The title of this essay is "Why inflation is good for us," and discusses the merits of inflation without any real discussion of cases where deflation could be good. At the end, he even raises the idea of a 4% rate target, which is a tad funny knowing the political mood on inflation 2021-24.

My point, really, is that I suspect I know most of his opinions without reading much of his work. He's hardly unique in that regard, but it bothers me. When looking for interesting opinions I'd probably look elsewhere.

[0] https://www.cfr.org/blog/history-and-future-federal-reserves...

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/111715/can-def...

[2] https://www.nber.org/papers/w10329

[3] https://timharford.com/2019/03/why-inflation-is-good-for-us/

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#112

Post by drcongo »

smeeth wrote: post #111
drcongo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, missed your reply. He's quite a well respected economist, and also presenter of the Pushkin podcast Cautionary Tales along with a lot of economics adjacent stuff for BBC radio and TV. Didn't mean for my question to sound snarky but on reflection I think it does, so sorry about that.

Not at all, even if there was snark intended I think its a fair question. I resisted ranting about it (I hope you'll indulge me now), but in general I don't much like the economics commentariat. As best I can tell, "respectability" seems to mean something like "modal economic views + left of center politics." There are of course some exceptions, e.g. occasionally the economist or WSJ, but it leads to some notable bli…

All perfectly fair. I tend to start from the point of view that economists are all great at telling us why something happened but terrible at telling us what will happen.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#113

Post by snapplebobapple »

braiamp wrote: post #101
snapplebobapple wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they want to make the correct argument that there is moderate waste on the budget when measured in the traditional sense of government paying more than a decent negotiator would payand a staggering amount of waste when measured as utility to the people paying the taxes vs alternatives. Saying gdp is wrong is a fail way to do this.

And yet the fiscal multiplier of money spent by the government is >1. Per each dollar spent by the state, there's a economic growth above one (btw, there's a paper that looks at many actions done by the government[0], guess which actions actually drag the multiplier down even in the most favorable estimations). [0]: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...

Yah, I personally don't think fiscal multiplier is a great measurement because it pushes you towards thinking about government spending in a couple of wrong ways. First of all, it's not correct to say government spending is good because it causes an increase in national income greater than the spending. The correct comparison is to what would have happened without the spending and it's both hard to figure out and not very clear that the government spent that money better than had the left it alone and the populace deployed their own cash/didn't adjust their own capital deployment to account for the extra debt the government took on in their name. This leads to the second problem with it and that's that the next thing someone who likes this measure will say is "the spending is exogenous" which is neither true or a good model of reality.

Also, looking at your paper I see the estimate range has 1 in it in all cases so I question the actual correctness of your statement. If one is in the likely range of effect you can't say spending is stimulating additional anything.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#114

Post by Gud »

rsynnott wrote: post #106
Gud wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. I’ve been following Elon for a long, long time. Since he was the PayPal guy who was going to blow his fortune buying Russian rockets. He was absolutely 100% focused on his ventures back then. His political awakening has been slowly happening over the last 10 years, at least his public persona. There was no “turning a blind eye” when I invested in Tesla when the Dragon capsule first docked with the ISS, in…

> when I invested in Tesla when the Dragon capsule first docked with the ISS, in 2012 This is what I mean! You invested in a company that made heavy consumer goods because he did a space thing! These are totally unrelated! You liked his aesthetics! 12 years previously to that, well, there was this nonsense: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-arm-wrestle-paypal... Like, I'm sorry, you can't tell me that's a sen…

No, I didn’t like “his aesthetics “. I saw a person capable of doing extraordinary things. He didn’t do “a space thing”. He succeeded in revolutionizing the space industry.

FWIW I also invested in BYD around the same time.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#115

Post by M3L0NM4N »

rsynnott wrote: post #106
Gud wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. I’ve been following Elon for a long, long time. Since he was the PayPal guy who was going to blow his fortune buying Russian rockets. He was absolutely 100% focused on his ventures back then. His political awakening has been slowly happening over the last 10 years, at least his public persona. There was no “turning a blind eye” when I invested in Tesla when the Dragon capsule first docked with the ISS, in…

> when I invested in Tesla when the Dragon capsule first docked with the ISS, in 2012 This is what I mean! You invested in a company that made heavy consumer goods because he did a space thing! These are totally unrelated! You liked his aesthetics! 12 years previously to that, well, there was this nonsense: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-arm-wrestle-paypal... Like, I'm sorry, you can't tell me that's a sen…

It is funny to compare things of the magnitude of "arm wrestle to win an argument over an operating system" to the defamatory personal smears, political conspiracy theory peddling, and general stupid and crybaby behavior.

Re: Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

#116

Post by mempko »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #58
mempko wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of examples where government is vastly more efficient than private sector. Medicare is vastly more efficient than private insurance. USPS is more efficient than private carriers. Another example is government pay. Usually much lower than the equivalent job at a private sector company. That's because private sector companies fail ALL THE TIME, and the COST of that inefficiency (waste of a failed compa…

Usually much lower than the equivalent job at a private sector company. People often state this, without acknowledging that: - many government employees would not meet the bar for an equivalent job in the private sector - the environment and red tape means that even an equally skilled employee would be less productive than they would be in a private sector firm that's subject to competitive pressures - for many gover…

I call bullshit. How do you know many government employees wouldn't meet the bar. This is just like, your opinion man.
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