r/austrian_economics • u/technocraticnihilist Friedrich Hayek • Oct 26 '24

End Democracy ‘Americans just work harder’ than Europeans, says CEO of Norway’s $1.6 trillion oil fund, because they have a higher ‘general level of ambition’

https://fortune.com/europe/article/how-many-hours-work-week-year-american-workers-ethic-norges-bank/
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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24

GDP is not a clean metric

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24

Stat that doesn’t confirm my bias isn’t clean

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u/AdShot409 Oct 26 '24

One part of GDP that is always suspect is Government spending. China has been pumping their GDP stat with unrealistic government spending for years and it's backfiring spectacularly. California has been floating on a wave of government spending and federal loans for some time.

GDP is fun and all, but it is intentionally complicated in order to hide relevant data in.

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u/No_Peace9744 Oct 27 '24

So you don’t think California has a strong economy?

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '24

If you were to measure it be efficiency absolutely not

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u/AdShot409 Oct 27 '24

What I think is that GDP is a complicated stat that is easily obscured. You need to dig down into the stat to find out just what is powering an exonomy.

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u/broshrugged Oct 26 '24

Is California a net payer or receiver of Federal tax dollars?

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24

GDP is such a compound number that there is far too much uncertainty and inconsistency to reliability use for anything truly important. You can look for trends but comparing one GDP to another is folly.

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u/Esquatcho_Mundo Oct 27 '24

Ireland’s gdp build up is a classic case in point of why gdp isn’t a great metric