alt Hacker NewsAs a % of GDP it doesn’t seem very large, but that’s because our GDP is so massive. This is still an entire Norway’s worth of GDP.
Like 1.2% isn’t a big percentage, but neither is 3.4% - our total military expenditures this year.
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noosphr • last Friday at 10:37 PM
The entire population of Norway fits in Queens and Brooklyn. If everyone there decided to whittle spoons we'd be midly concerned about just what got in their water, but it won't be an existential crisis for the rest of us.
I will never understand people who use tiny European countries as meaningful comparisons to continent sized ones.
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You’re right that it’s large in an absolute sense, but any sector of the US economy is going to be large in an absolute sense. It’s not a very meaningful statement. Using percentages allows comparison to other items, which for some purposes gives a more useful sense of size. For instance, based on your numbers, AI expenditure is about 1/3 the total military expenditure. I tend to agree that this is less than I expected, and generally makes me feel a bit better about the (imo excessive) hype.