One of my Berkeley friends, apparently having forgiven me for my less than flattering portrait of his town, sent me http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/01/dynamic-america-poor-europe.html . What struck me about this page is the second table, in which the GDP per capita of various U.S. states are presented. It turns out the citizens of Washington, D.C. are more than three times as productive as the average American. This despite the fact that Washington has a lot of poor and/or unemployed people.
Perhaps we have to reevaluate our view of government workers and lobbyists as parasites. These people are actually the nation’s most productive people! Alternatively, we might need to find a better measure of economic well-being than GDP.
The GDP is the only bit of self-flattery left for the US to claim “greatest nation” status. By any other measure from infant mortality to internet connectivity, it generally ranks middling-low in the top 20. Given that income stratification is more severe at this time than any other within record economic history in the U.S. it is clear that for the top 0.1% of the country, things are quite rosy but for those who are more equal than others things are on a long, slow downward slide.
I think this issue here is that DC has a commuting population larger than its workforce, so GDP per capita is inflated by all the workers who live in MD and VA.
Not surprising, as GDP measures activity, not whether it is socially desirable or not. Lobbyists extract money from future generations, much as a miner would extract minerals from the ground.
The construction work on repairs after hurricane Katrina increased GDP in the affected areas. That does not mean we should wish for more category 4+ hurricanes to come our way and boost our GDP.
@fazal i think it is very clear that lobbyists extract plenty of money from the current generations. do you think that our children will be less sheeplike or more sheeplike than we?
Tom: Thanks for the reminder about the commuters. It is an interesting statistical anomaly, eh?
A crooked lawyer died and was before eternal judgment. Feeling merciful, God said he would send him to hell, but it would be only temporary, for only as much time as the lawyer had cheated his clients. So God said;”you are going to hell for 150 years.”
“150 years”, the lawyer said. “How can that be possible? I was only 85 years old when I died?”
“Maybe so”, God said, “but I was going by your time sheets.”