The GDP Number Doesn’t Consider America’s Crippling Debt
(00:00.386)
I want to give everybody a quick refresher course on GDP. We had GDP revisions come out this past week. And again, by the administration crowing about this great growth that we have here. What did it cost? What did it cost? Again, one of the things that unfortunately people don’t understand when it comes to GDP, they associate it with wealth.
I’ve explained this before here. If someone, someone on the surface, someone on the surface got nice house, nice car, nice clothes, watch again, something I deal with all the time. Okay. And my, my business, they have the appearance of wealth. But they also have, they also have, you know,
no equity in their home, little to no equity in their home. They’ve got tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. They don’t own their vehicle. They’ve got stuff. They’ve got stuff, but they don’t have wealth and what they do have is a lot of debt. Is that, again, do you define someone like that on the facade, the appearance of being wealthy? No. No. Yeah, again, I…
talked about Warren Buffett this past weekend on the radio show. He lives in the same house he’s had since the 1960s. He paid like $30 ,000 for, and he’s a pretty wealthy guy. You calculate GDP, it’s just output. It’s production and goods and services. Now, the way that I’ve explained this before in the past is if I decide,
If I decide at Markowski Investments that I’m going to hire a whole bunch of college graduates to go out and dig holes. Yeah, just go out there guys and do a new thing here. Markowski Investments, we’re going to dig holes and then we’re going to fill them in. That would increase national GDP. Yeah, it would. It would increase national GDP.
(02:23.874)
The GDP growth that we’ve seen, well, our gross domestic product grew by $334 billion in the fourth quarter. Oh my God, that’s awesome. Binomics at play, it’s wonderful. Ah, yeah, right. That cost $834 billion.
Is that wealth? Did we become wealthier or better off as a nation at the $334 billion in GDP growth that cost us $834 billion, which then we put on our kids and our grandkids credit card. I actually saw some moron on CNBC actually talk about, yes, but it’s going to be the benefits down the road. It’s not going to see, oh, shut up.
Shut up, we’re $34 trillion in debt. Give me a fricking break. Again, we’re not building wealth as a nation. GDP has nothing to do with wealth. The economic idiocy that has become so pervasive here in this country, it’s extraordinary. It really is. People just do not have a clue. They don’t have a clue. They thought that this GDP number was great. How?
What did it cost? What did it cost? And it cost us a lot of money. Did it not? It added to our debt. We don’t have a sovereign wealth fund. What do we got? Yosemite? Seriously, we’re not building up wealth. To think that we’re on the right track where we have to spend this amount of money to produce so little.
in GDP, quite frankly, is pathetic and sad. And I had to tell the story once again. I’ve written about it before. Actually on our website, got my columns dating back all the way to the 1990s there. And I admit I’ve got to start writing again. I haven’t been as prolific as I used to be. But anyway, a column I wrote entitled, Digging with Spoons. And it’s a story of Milton Friedman, 1960s. He’s visiting China.
(04:40.738)
trying to figure out what in God’s creation is going on over there in China. And 1960s China, not a good place. Mao, Cultural Revolution, Mess. Milton Friedman’s at this big public works project. And he’s watching all of these Chinese workers doing this massive project. I don’t know, canal, I don’t know, whatever it may be, it’s not important. Digging with shovels.
He was digging with shovels and he asked, obviously he had his little Mao government minder with him, asking him, why don’t you guys, I don’t know, use bulldozers? Why don’t you use equipment to make this job a hell of a lot easier? And the Chinese government minder comes back to him and says, oh, you think this is a public works project? It’s not, it’s a jobs project. We’re here to create jobs.
Friedman thought about it and said, well, you know what, why don’t you take the shovels away and give them spoons and have them dig with spoons. But again, that same economic idiocy exists today. You know, the Paul Krugmans, the Alan Blinders of the world, many of these left -wing economists, that’s fine with them. Print more money, print more money and put people to work doing nothing, doing nothing and having a farce of a GDP. Watchdog on wallstreet .com.
