Mfs seem to have forgotten that Chinese GDP PPP is already higher than the US
Chinese GDP: from making actual goods and services
US GDP: check out this spreadsheet that lets us charge rental fees on a toaster
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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Two accountants were walking through a park one day, when they came across a pile of dog shit.
"I will pay you 50$ to eat that." one said to the other.
And thusly the continued on, until they came across another pile of dog shit.
"I will pay you 50$ to eat that." said the accountant who still had the taste of dog shit in his mouth.
And on they went.
"Hey." said the other and stopped walking. "I feel like we both just ate dog shit and got nothing out of it."
The other accountant turned sharply towards his collague.
"Nonsense! The national GDP rose by 100 dollars!"
meaningless metric
Thanks. That was disgusting to read.
You're welcome 
Some peak comments
The difference between democracy and dictatorship is like a ceiling light versus a flashlight. The ceiling light won't shine evenly everywhere in a crowded room, some places might get less light and some places might be too obstructed to get any light at all, but all in all the room is brighter. Whereas with a flashlight you can point it at any part of the room you want and illuminate it, but the room as a whole isn't as bright.
I can feel my political understanding get better already. In taking this analogy seriously, I have come to understand that democracies ... uh ... huh. What is even the point here?
In particular, democratic republics are more stable due to having transitions of power happen peacefully, regularly, and frequently, which helps reduce corruption and, ideally, prevents leaders from being too disconnected from the people they govern.
Bro you live in the United States.
Yes, but a lot of China's troubles were going to happen. China stressed short-term GDP gains as opposed to playing the long game following 2008's crash. This was while Hu Jintao was in charge. So, while a ton of funds got thrown at infrastructure projects, a lot of them were for little more than vanity, if even that. China built an extensive high-speed rail network. But it consistently loses money.
Divine comedy.
Communism is like the sun. It is the natural order and everyone gets as much light as they need
Whereas with a flashlight you can point it at any part of the room you want and illuminate it, but the room as a whole isn't as bright.
Many of my flashlights (I own 3, not trying to brag) are brighter than my ceiling lights by a huge margin and quite easily illuminate a whole room. This analogy only really "works" if you're talking about a maglight from the 90s.
China built an extensive high-speed rail network. But it consistently loses money.
Literally a week ago (China State Railway Group includes high-speed rail as well):
Also, companies like Amazon and Uber made huge losses for YEARS, so they could increase market share and eventually use their size to incur massive profits later.
I wouldn't compare china's railways to amazon or uber. They don't need to make a profit in the first place. Dumbass neoliberals, despite proclaiming themselves as the clerics of capitalism don't even seem to understand that the only bad kind of debt for a government is foreign debt. And china has a massive trade surplus. They don't need to give a shit that the railways are making a loss.
I’m so incredibly confused by this argument lol. Do these people think the US is making any profits from roads? Oh right, the automakers and gas companies’ profits are what matters.
That last one especially is insane. “They only focused on short term profit, but also they built a major infrastructure network in that time, but it’s functional instead of profitable so that’s bad actually.”. Just complete whiplash.
It is shit here but you should actually love it being shit because it is shit because if our librul democracy where you can choose between the polite imperialist right and the rude imperialist right. And because of that our shitty stuff is better than their good stuff.
Whereas with a flashlight you can point it at any part of the room you want and illuminate it, but the room as a whole isn't as bright.
If you take a decently bright flashlight and put it on the floor pointing up, it pretty much lights the whole room. Even a phone’s flash does a decent job at it.
In particular, democratic republics are more stable due to having transitions of power happen peacefully, regularly, and frequently, which helps reduce corruption and, ideally, prevents leaders from being too disconnected from the people they govern.
And how is that working out in practice?
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GDP is bullshit anyway, if a storm hits a city causing 200B of damage the repairs get counted to GDP but the destruction does not.
It's just a totally phony propaganda number with mutable definitions
poor people getting a nutritious meal and shelter does nothing for GDP and therefore bad.
building a kill house to train heavily armed and militarized police murder squads against your own citizens is good for GDP and therefore good.
neoliberal economic theory: it's just that easy.
I presume that whoever owns the infrastructure will be able to report the losses and so reduce the GDP calculations. Damage to homes will probably also play a part in the calculations as their values are tracked by banks and the government. For smaller personal assets, I don't think the value would be tracked. Also, the 200B damages counting towards GDP could have been spent elsewhere, so the storm wouldn't really increase GDP. It would also reduce personal incomes of city dwellers.
As much as we like to shit on bourgeois economists, I think even they at least know better than to pull a broken window fallacy with GDP calculations, since that is something you are taught even in econ 101.
The real thing that (nominal) GDP measures is purchasing power of countries relative to other countries on the international markets at current prices (assuming frictionless trade). I do think it is a useful number to denote a few things, like, 1. is the country in a recession, 2. where does this country stand wrt imperialism, 3. how developed the country is.
infrastructure is considered a 'stock' you measure it at any point in time.
GDP is a 'flow', total value of final goods and services measured over a year. so if a country has a bridge worth $100b, that won't be included in GDP since it already exists, it won't be shown when its destroyed/depreciates either. it is only measured for the year its built, no other year.
so if a storm hits, people lose jobs, homes, reduce consumption, GDP falls. to counter some of the effects, the Government injects money through jobs programs, stimulus checks, ppp loans etc which prevents some of the fall.
GDP is a ‘flow’, total value of final goods and services measured over a year. so if a country has a bridge worth $100b, that won’t be included in GDP since it already exists, it won’t be shown when its destroyed/depreciates either. it is only measured for the year its built, no other year.
Yeah, I don't know why I said that the destruction of the bridge would be counted. For GDP metrics, the product/service is assumed to have been consumed entirely in the year it was sold.
Reddit style comment on news like this:
I'm using "Rich Guy" metrics to interpret the economy from my position of "Not A Rich Guy" in a country with 40+ years of growing socioeconomic stratification that doesn't actually make anything except guns 
Nah, a good chunk of r/neoliberal is firmly in the labor aristocracy or petit bourgeoise. I think these guys did a survey at some point and the typical subscriber a 30 something tech worker on the east/west coast.
Jesus that's a grim statistic
It's like a convention for people who will end up doing the office jobs for the Fifth Reich
You've described reddit overall.
what
material conditions and class interest determine politics
how could this be
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The modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a 1934 U.S. Congress report, where he warned against its use as a measure of welfare
Hilarious because I'm reading "The Long Twentieth Century" which basically argues that there is a cycle of which power leads the capitalist world before being replaced by another capitalist power. Each power (Genoa, Netherlands, Great Britain, USA) began with an expansion of commercial and commodity production, which then reaches the limit of profits, before turning all excess capital towards financial expansion. Each financial expansion makes the capitalist class incredibly rich and prolongs their dominance, but sews the seeds for their end. It's during this financial expansion that the next capitalist power starts their commercial expansion and becomes "the world's factory."
The author shows that America's financial turn was during the late 70s and especially 80s. He doesn't draw this conclusion, but it's clear to me that China is the current capitalist power that's taken over the commercial role in shipping and manufacturing. Even though I think China is an AES, they still have a capitalist economy.
We always joke that the commies in China do capitalism better than capitalists, but it's demonstrably true. America has dominance right now due to financial networks, but that arrangement won't last much longer with the material dominance of the Chinese economy.
I am also reading the long 20th century. Haven't gotten that deep in it yet, but yeah, China does seem poised to become the new and final hegemon, given the historical trend of each capitalist hegemon being larger than the previous one.
I do kind of expect the book's analysis to be of limited quality, since they seem to be working off a bizarre and unmaterialistic definition of capitalism based on political power and commerce (a pre-marxist understanding). Maybe as I read along it will be cleared up.
Could you expand on what you mean by "unmaterialistic definition of capitalism"? I think the entire thesis is built around understanding the MCM cycle, and it says capitalism only becomes systemic to the entire mode of production under the British industrial expansion.
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"Nominal" is so stupid, it depends on exchange rate and not actual purchasing power.
Yeah, Im sure that basing trends off of a couple years of economic data as opposed to a literal decade of trends has never backfired.
As well, yeah, they have stopped building so many houses, but as others have said, GDP is a bullshit number anyways.
Why's the tick label for 2000 missing? It's annoying me.
China's GDP PPP is something like $24 trillion and the US is like $18 trillion.. something along those lines I heard recently
Depending on who's measuring. China is significantly ahead regardless of source though
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I wish I had saved and archived the thread where they though GDP was the sum of all money on earth. Makes the neoliberal fixation with GDP even funnier.
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