Errors in Palladium's "How GDP Hides Industrial Decline

https://totalhealthoptimization.com/2025/10/05/errors-in-palladiums-how-gdp-hides-industrial-decline/

by whoisburbansky • 10 months ago

8 3 10 months ago

yorwba• 10 months ago

This response appears to have completely missed the point of the article it's responding to, as evidenced by unironically titling a subsection "public misunderstanding of a technical term is irrelevant." The critique of GDP isn't that it is somehow calculated incorrectly, but that the calculation does not behave the way people unfamiliar with the details expect it to behave. In particular, they expect that the number going up is good.

Surprisingly then, the very last sentence of the conclusion gets to the crux of the matter: 'his position on manufacturing statistics appears to boil down to “all the numbers should be going up, and none of the numbers should go down.”' If you have a number where sometimes a good thing makes it go up and sometimes a bad thing makes it go up, then that number going up isn't helpful for determining whether things are good or bad.

It is then also perfectly coherent to criticize both value-added and gross output metrics, even though each avoids a problem identified in the other, because neither avoids all problems.

fuzzfactor• 10 months ago

That's sufficient wording and it all confirms that the Totalhealth author is not very well versed in the purpose and design of GDP to begin with. Quite thoroughly. Probably doesn't even remember what it was like when GDP was drawn up, so that much is understandable.

But definitely not to be taken seriously when it comes to anything related to economics.

While displaying all the signs of a not-even-superficial understanding of industrial activity. Don't make me laugh.

There's decades of study and first-hand experience that might suffice to correlate theory with reality, then determine first-hand how the statistics fit into the equation. No time like the present to get started.

Most people today wouldn't last two days on a factory floor, but at Totalhealth they've got a zero-day structural error that does seem like a tragic handicap by comparison.

huem0n• 10 months ago

Can we agree GDP is a bad metric even if Palladium's arguments have problems?

I mean it is good to correct the record on value-added whatever. But let's not miss the forest focusing on one tree: GPD can go up from car crashes, natural disasters -- hell it goes up for totally economically-neutral actions like if I sell a car today, then buy it back for the same price tomorrow. It doesn't account for borrowing aganist the future, it doesnt account for income inequality, environmental degradation, etc. It is simply how much money is swirling around. As a measure for economic prosperity or quality of life, it is truly terrible.

Errors in Palladium's "How GDP Hides Industrial Decline

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