The concept is called “imputations” — which are “what if” scenarios.

Example: When a person buys a home, the gov adds that person’s imaginary rent to the GDP!

That is, if he didn’t buy a home, he would have spent X dollars on rent. There are two more shenanigans like that you can read in the article.

By this measure, China has already caught up with the US a long time ago.

  • Water Bowl Slime
    17·
    7 months ago

    Lol yeah the bean counters needed a way to make America look good so they came up with the idea that homeowners are their own tenants and pay imaginary rent to themselves. They also include healthcare costs in GDP so when a pharma corp charges you 30x more for meds, that’s good for the economy!!

    The US cooks the books on everything it does so it’s hard to judge how bad things are truly going, but it means a lot that China’s real numbers are comparable to the bs American stats.

    • 201dberg
      9·
      7 months ago

      Oh yeah, just look how they change the way they calculate inflation and how they changed the definition of recession. lol