alt Hacker NewsIt is an indicator and it's not totally non-meaningful. But GDP growth, when it's at the price of increasing the public debt and inflation, is no real growth.
Instead of looking at the US, let's look at what used to be a relevant ally...
In the eurozone, for example, politicians are hiding the lack of growth behind a growing mountain of public debt and the GDP growth ain't even beating inflation since the 2008 crisis. In 2008 the eurozone represented about 25% of the world's GDP. Now it's not even 15% anymore.
Falling into irrelevancy doesn't begin to describe the state of things for the eurozone: from 25% of the world's GDP to less than 15% in 17 years is more than alarming.
And yet if you look at the eurozone in Euro, it looks like it's been growing since 2008. But it's actually been stuck since nearly two decades now and there aren't signs of anything getting any better in the eurozone. German carmarkers, the number one export of the eurozone, are in huge trouble (with China eating their lunch).
The US and China are, obviously, less fucked than the eurozone but the USA's growth has also been achieved at the cost of a runaway public debt and runaway inflation.
I don't know what protectionism can and cannot do for the US and it's not clear if manufacturing can really come back to the US but one thing is certain: the eurozone is a failure and whatever it is that they did or do should definitely not be copied. Unelected bureaucrats have managed, in 17 years, to drive the eurozone into the ground. It's mostly true for non-eurozone EU countries as well but some, like Poland (which is in the EU but not in the eurozone), are doing fine.
Basically: if you want to slash your part of the world's GDP by 40% in 17 years, do what the eurozone did.
Now we must understand this: the eurozone didn't just slash it's part of the global GDP by 40% in 17 years... They did so while, at the same time, creating a gigantic mountain of public debt and experiencing inflation.
Another 17 years of this, so another 40% loss, and the eurozone would only represent 9% of the world's GDP. And these unelected bureaucrats are so incompetent that I don't discard the possibility that they'll actually be able to crash the eurozone even faster than that. For example at the moment, while german carmarkers are in trouble, EU bureaucrats are hard at work trying to kill them for good.
Anti-americanism and anti-trumpism is a thing on HN but people should really look more closely at what's happening elsewhere.
What about an article from The Economist as to the reasons the eurozone managed to lose 40% of their share of the world's GDP since the 2008 financial crisis?
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Yeah but it wasn’t the unelected bureaucrats that fucked the EU. It was the German attitude towards debt and the redistribution of surplus. The Eurogroup sheepishly followed whatever Austerity fever dream of Schauble, tanked the Greek economy to teach every other Med country a lesson and by doing so, crippled any chance of post 2009 recovery
Treating share of global gdp as meaningful is bizarre. It doesn't have to be bad for your share to shrink as long as the overall pie is growing.
I don't know - GDP has a few counter intuitive cases.
One example is when the same stuff gets more expensive. If I have something, like a loaf of bread, a house, a smartphone all of them the exact same get more expensive, GDP increases if demand doesn't change (let's say because its inflexible).
You could argue this is due to some increased foreign demand for said product and the price increase legit represents increased economic output.
But in the case of tariffs for example, we know that's not the case - stuff became more expensive because of levied taxes. No new stuff got produced, no foreigners are buying up this stuff, demand likely decreased for said product, yet the GDP contribution increased.
Another very typical example are things with inflexible supply, such as housing, where due to the increased volume of money, the exact same house now costs more. But since transactions still happen, that means the economy got better, right?
The Eurozone isn't a failure at all, and as a Polish person it annoys me that we have zloty and not Euro, it's very inconvenient when trying to do business beyond polish borders. It impacts me every month and creates quite some bureaucracy.
In any case where the European union keeps failing is that it keeps not focusing on creating as many common rules and regulations across the EU, so, yet again, scaling your french business beyond your borders, or bulgarian one, is always very difficult.
Most countries in Europe are ridden by pointless nationalism on so many matters when our biggest issue is creating a strong internal market in Europe, but our biggest economies are still manufacturing and exporting ones, with little focus on the strengthening of our internal markets.
GDP growth figures are adjusted for inflation.
US looks everything except being "less fucked" as eurozone. It is actively self destructing while mounting debt while, true, trying to destruct everyone else.
Share of the world's GDP is a flawed metric. It tells us we're getting a smaller slice, but it doesn't tell us if the pie grew or shrunk. If the EU grew by 50% while India and China became 200% richer, then on paper the share of the world's GDP would be dramatically lower, while everyone would be better off.
I don't disagree with the sentiment you expressed at all though.