Face It! You're Being DUPED by GDP Figures!
Jeremy Miller
Product (GDP) figures that it releases.
Think about it! If you fork over $500 to your shiftless
brother-in-law, would you want this transaction reflected in the GDP?
Of course not, for it does not represent the production of anything!
Well, GDP reflects more of a shift of wealth from the vast middle
class to the minority upper class more than it reflects great
production to be enjoyed by all of society.
For example, it was reported on T.V. that credit card usage has
doubled in the last couple of years. With this increase comes much
greater assessment of card fess such as the $40 penalty which is
charged when you exceed your credit limit.
It was reported that the banks are making out like bandits on these
card fees. These fees go into the GDP as the production of financial
services, but what does the consumer get for these fees? NOTHING of a
tangible, utility value!
So, what we see here is a shift of wealth to the upper class being
counted as GDP. The same is true for mortgage application fees for
home equity loans, these loans (and their interest) themselves
representing a shift of wealth to the upper class. Home equity loans
are really a sale of a part of the market value of a home without
legal title passing (at least for now, that is, until foreclosure
occurs).
Now, you have artificially inflated prices in the housing market due
to equal housing opportunity laws. These laws are the flip side of the
equal employment opportunity laws which downwardly equalize wages
(within job category) to the perceived value of the least preferred
job candidate. Equal housing laws *raise* the price of real estate to
the point where the seller cares not at all about with whom he deals
just as long as the price is right!
So, you have a developer like "The Donald" who builds a $100,000
house, adds a few amenities, slaps a price tag of $2,000,000 on the
offering, and then is glad to sell it to "The Weird One" because the
price is high enough to make the deal palatable.
Now, most people are not wealthy like "The Weird One," but they are
having to fork over a big premium for the houses they buy (due to
equality), and this is nothing more than a shift of wealth to the
wealthy. This artificial premium due to equality goes into GDP when it
really shouldn't.
Similar things are going on in the medical and pharmaceutical sectors.
Because of so much public and private insurance coverage for these
things, there is artificially high demand in these markets responsible
for great premiums in price relative to what prices really should be
under normal conditions. The extra high costs of medical services and
pharmaceuticals are really a shift of wealth to the wealthy and go
into GDP as real production, which they are NOT!
People are getting divorced and paying $20,000 to $50,000 in legal
fees for each case. This is counted as legal services in the GDP, but
in the big picture, does it represent real production that has a
positive impact on our society? Of course not! It's more of a shift of
wealth from the middle class to the wealthy class of lawyers.
Now, overall the figures for domestic production are INFLATED due to
INFLATION! But the government passes off these inflated figures as
increases in real production. They take the deflationary effect of
infusing our society with cheap, cheap foreign goods and balance this
against the inflated prices for domestically produced goods and
services (as already noted in the real estate, medical, and
pharmaceutical sectors). Then the government says, "Hey, there's no
inflation of which to speak," and they then go on to pass off inflated
prices of domestic goods as real increases in domestic production.
SCAM, SCAM, SCAM!
A closer look at production would reveal that real GDP is actually
dropping in the U.S. as evidenced by the loss of 3,000,000 jobs during
the current Bush administration.
Then you have the mighty retailing giant Wal-Mart. In the past, if a
retailer sold a domestically made pair of shoes for $20.00, then the
$20.00 would be counted in the Gross National Product with $10.00
representing wholesale/production costs and $10.00 representing the
"fluff" of retail services. Now, however, Wal-mart sells $20.00
imported shoes, with $10.00 of the price being counted as imports and
$10.00 worth of retail "fluff" going into the GDP.
So, now, for Wal-Mart transactions, we get only the "fluff" and none
of the "meat" going into GDP. This "fluff" represents a shift of
wealth from the vast middle class to the obscenely wealthy Walton
family ($100+ billion) who serve as the Wal-Mart middlemen between us
and our undoing, meaning exporting countries like China, Mexico, India
and many others. These countries are our undoing because they
represent our ever growing trade deficit which is putting the U.S. on
the fast track to abject poverty. EVERY ADDITIONAL TRANSACTION FOR
FOREIGN GOODS WHICH CONTRIBUTES TO AN INCREMENT IN THE TRADE DEFICIT
NOT ONLY REPRESENTS A LOSS OF MONEY FROM OUR SYSTEM, BUT IT ALSO
REPRESENTS THE MUCH, MUCH BIGGER LOSS OF THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT AND ITS
POTENTIAL MAGNIFIED CONTRIBUTION TO OUR [REAL] GDP.
Jeremy Miller
P.S. Go into one of the ever growing number of casinos in this
country, and drop ten grand at one of the gaming tables. Now, if this
isn't a shift of wealth to the wealthy, I don't know what is. The
advice here is, "Look to the quality of your GDP before you base
financial or political decisions on it."
RayO
"Socialism is a Mental Disease" <root@localhost.> wrote in message
news:5i3j60hc41c9tpj1l...@4ax.com...
> On 30 Mar 2004 06:12:31 -0800, jay...@hotmail.com (Jeremy Miller)
> wrote:
> >
> >Think about it! If you fork over $500 to your shiftless
> >brother-in-law, would you want this transaction reflected in the GDP?
> >
>
>
> >
> >It was reported that the banks are making out like bandits on these
> >card fees. These fees go into the GDP as the production of financial
> >services, but what does the consumer get for these fees? NOTHING of a
> >tangible, utility value!
> >
>
> they are getting enough value back. As for being tangible, that is
> simply bullshit. The Coca-Cola brand is an intangible and worth
> billions.
>
> >
> >Jeremy Miller
> >
>
> Jeremy, you are a moron.
No he isn't! He knows something about economics,
which you obviously don't. The future of a country's
fortune depends not on how much it spends, but what
she spends it on.
Do you know what the government has been
reporting as the annual inflation figure for housing for
the past few years? ~2.3%! Yup, it doesn't even pass the
laugh test! Don't believe me? Go look it up in BLS's web
site for CPI components. It's basically a scam. Only by
understating inflation since 2001, and other accounting
gimmickry, has the the government been able to report
positive real GDP growth since then. Once the bond
market figures out the con, which will happen sooner
or later, there will be hell to pay.
RayO