Aren’t all action movies basically male Mary Sue concepts?
Related to this, I’m curious as to your thoughts on the following.
GDP is a good measure in respect to the inputs being measured by a common unit of value, but it can still import bias via the selection of the inputs. GDP measures goods and services produced, but not all things that are designated as a service are adding productive or serviceable value to the economy. For example, things like late fees, over draft charges, and finance charges are tabulated as being positive additions to GDP. So, if a bank is able to charge $1M more in fees, that counts towards an increase in GDP, despite it adding nothing of real value as a service to anyone.
1 Like
Is that true? Shouldn’t that be net zero unless a foreign entity is paying the fee?
GDP isn’t a measure of net money into a country. If I build a birdhouse and sell it to me neighbor, that’s part of the GDP.
MCM,
I’ve speculated before about the famous decoupling of productivity and income, that it might be as much about phantom productivity as any real decoupling.
I hope I can learn something here. In your example a birdhouse was produced. This increases the GDP and makes sense to me.
Are you saying that if two banks charge each other $1 million in fees that this will increase the GDP by $2 million, or that the fees charged and paid will cancel each other out in the books because both are businesses? If the latter, if a bank now charges consumers instead of businesses the same fees will count towards the GDP?
(others can chime in if they’d like)
It seems like the right way to understand this is that the assorted fees that banks charge are part of the price they charge for providing a checking account, which is a valuable financial service. If the fees increase, conceptually it’s not different from the price for a TV going up. Of course, if fees go up just because banks thought of a new dishonest trick or because regulations are weakened, then I agree you’re not really getting good information about the value of financial services.
I think it’s just assumed that if money is exchanged, value has been created, even if someone is paying $1200 for a digital rendering of a basketball jumpshot or whatever people are talking about in that thread I’ve never entered or if banks are charging each other fees or if they are actually doing something that provides something useful or increases the quality of people’s lives. When the police are going around with trash trucks fucking with people (another thread) they are increasing the GDP. Dropping bombs increases the GDP. Tesla being “worth” a hundred quadrillion dollars increases the GDP. People who make money in the $640 Trillion (that number I’m not making up) derivatives market increase the GDP.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- GDP can be calculated by adding up all of the money spent by consumers, businesses, and government in a given period.
- It may also be calculated by adding up all of the money received by all the participants in the economy.
- In either case, the number is an estimate of “nominal GDP.”
- Once adjusted to remove any effects due to inflation, “real GDP” is revealed.
2 Likes
And there’s certainly bias involved in believing that an aggregate increase in economic value leads to an increase in people’s well being.
The argument in economics is that a measure is needed, which is then able to be calculated and compared across economies and times. That’s fine, but it’s much less clear why political decisions, which are of course inherently biased, need to privilege that ability given they’re taken in particular countries (largely) at particular moments in time.
(Not that they’re unimportant points, just that the imperative to be able to do macroeconomics in a way that makes it seem like a social science doesn’t have good knock down analogue in political decision making.)
1 Like
Just to close the loop on this point. I’m at 99% certainty it is true, and it seems bobman’s response aligns with that understanding of it as well.
I think I would agree. Can expand on this a bit?
Whether the fees goes up because of dishonest tricks or legalized gaming of the system or simply to maximize profits, that doesn’t change the value received by the consumer of the financial service rendered. So, that would mean we would see an increase in GDP without a corresponding increase in the value delivered to society. Including financial services in GDP as credit rather than as a debit seems to be biased in favor making banking appear to be an additive rather than an extractive part of the economy.
3 Likes
Goddamn, what a fucking moron.
I once saw a dude throw small rocks at a male gorilla. I think it was at the wild animal park. The gorilla was smart enough to know he couldn’t get to the guy but you could tell he wanted to.
1 Like
Reminds me of this:
In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University.
On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee, inspected the elephant’s foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.
The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.
Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.
Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly. Probably wasn’t the same elephant.
15 Likes
Well that escalated quickly.
1 Like
Not to the extent that these guys go. The real champ is Bill O’Reilly, who Mary Sues himself as a psycho killer who goes on a murder rampage against his former colleagues at CNN, but also retcons himself as a tough-guy detective tracking down the serial killer. It’s a rare double-Mary Sue.
Then there’s Howard Hunt, who Mary Sued himself as a tough-guy detective going after a weird sex cult in the JFK administration. Way ahead of his time!
X-Files fans will remember the Smoking Man character. He was loosely supposed to be a jab at Howard Hunt. There’s a bit where the Smoking Man admits he originally wanted to be a novelist but sucked at it so he became a CIA guy. Hunt basically sucked at being a Nixon black bag man and wound up being a sucky pulp novelist. Interesting stuff.
1 Like
I don’t think you really mean this. Obviously providing a checking account is an economically valuable service. If people and businesses couldn’t use checking accounts to handle their transactions, the rest of the economy would be much less productive. But I think the more fundamental problem is that “the value received by the consumer” is not something that can ever be measured, and I would argue it isn’t even a coherent notion. The only thing that can ever be measured is how much people paid for stuff.
5 Likes
18 year olds are way more perceptive and intelligent than they get credit for. A significant number are clearly more intelligent than I was at 18.
1 Like
is it going to be a trmp-branded parler, or is this going to be like his low-budget hotels that never happened ?
1 Like
Another business venture that’ll fall apart before it begins
Trump steaks, Trump airlines, Trump vodka, Trump Ice, Trump Magazine and now Trump media