Daily Graphs and Charts

[Leoreth]

Considering America's greatness is so self-evident you sure have a remarkable desire to prove it to everyone else - or yourself?

[Godwynn]

Originally Posted by Leoreth

Considering America's greatness is so self-evident you sure have a remarkable desire to prove it to everyone else - or yourself?

Only the Northern half.

So Europe is in one way a lot like the United States.

[Winner]

Originally Posted by Godwynn

That explains why this country is not even a quarter of a millennium old and it has a higher GDP per capita than 90% of Europe.

Still a poor substitute for actual culture, if you ask me

[kronic]

Originally Posted by Godwynn

That explains why this country is not even a quarter of a millennium old and it has a higher GDP per capita than 90% of Europe

As said many times before. When you use GDP per hour worked to measure output, most (but admittedly not all) of the difference is gone. Americans work longer - and we like to spend some time not working our ass off. Got the concept?

[Godwynn]

Originally Posted by kronic

As said many times before. When you use GDP per hour worked to measure output, most (but admittedly not all) of the difference is gone. Americans work longer - and we like to spend some time not working our ass off. Got the concept?

Yeah, Europeans don't work. That explains Greece and Portugal.

[Joecoolyo]

Originally Posted by Winner

Still a poor substitute for actual culture, if you ask me

Dunno, you guys seemed to have adopted it pretty quickly.

[Quackers]

America was formed by mainly European immigrants.
We ARE YOU Godwynn.

[VRWCAgent]

Um, America was formed by plate tectonics, glaciers, erosion, etc.

[Godwynn]

Originally Posted by Quackers

America was formed by mainly European immigrants.
We ARE YOU Godwynn.

Originally Posted by VRWCAgent

Um, America was formed by plate tectonics, glaciers, erosion, etc.

lol, schooled

[Quackers]

wut..

[wolfigor]

Less than one percent of one percent of all Americans account for one quarter of all individual campaign donations. These elite donors all contribute at least $10,000 per election cycle, giving money to multiple candidates, party committees, and sometimes independent expenditure groups.

Within this select community of elite donors, individuals who work in the finance industry play a particularly special role. Of the $774 million in individual contributions given by this class of elite donors in 2010, $178 million (23%) came from elite donors in the finance, insurance and real estate sector. Perhaps more importantly, the ranks and total contributions from these donors have grown more dramatically and substantially than any other sector.

FIRE = finance, insurance, and real estate
No surprise that these sectors got very favorable legislations in the last decade.



full article and more (interactive) graphs:
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2...e-one-percent/

[metatron]

Originally Posted by Godwynn

That explains why this country is not even a quarter of a millennium old and it has a higher GDP per capita than 90% of Europe.

This again?

You know how patently ridiculous this is?

GDP does not reflect any form of net quality of life. It does by and large reflect efforts vaguely directed at increasing quality of life.
These efforts can be vain or outright counterproductive. They none the less are accounted for by GDP.
The efforts could also be perfectly superflous as in working very hard to get something others get for free or something even you could have for free...
...or working very hard to get something that you subjectively want but that doesn't objectively improve your quality of life on any reasonable objective measure.

Of course the contrast between western continental Europe (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany etc.) on the one hand and the US on the other hand regarding pointless nonsense being a part of the GDP could hardly be any more stark.

An example:
On average (grossly generalizing here, bear with me^^) continental western Europeans have the tendency to construct rather small but solid dwellings, that are well isolated and close to their workplace and their sources of everyday needs, like the place where they shop for groceries.
Americans (again: on average) do quite the opposite. To Europeans it frequently seems like they actually do that on purpose. They are really hellbent on moving into a giant house made of cardboard as far away from their job as possible and with precisely zero retail within a two-mile radius.

The diverging habits about this alone catastrophically increase US GDP compared to European GDP without anything really being accomplished (well, apart from living really far away from inner city black people).

• The gas the American burns on his longer commute: -> GDP
  The talk radio insuring that he will be fed up with people and angry when he arrives at work: -> GDP
  Giant bills for superfluous heating and electricity: -> GDP
  3-mile ride to the supermarket: -> GDP
  The European walking to the grocery store: -> no GDP
  The American joining a health club to compensate for not walking to the grocery store: -> GDP

...of course this trend continues through all aspects of life...

• The Americans wife having a 35 hours a week badly paying job: -> GDP*
  That wife hiring a babysitter: -> GDP*
  The babysitter driving 20 miles "accross town": -> GDP
  The typical German mom having no job or a 17 hours a week job chatting with some other moms at the playground in the sun at the same time: -> no GDP
  The American rebuilding his giant cardboard house after stuff happened to it (hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes, mold, termites etc.): -> GDP
  The European not having any of that to worry about: -> no GDP
  Harsher winters in America despite the latitude: -> GDP
  Warmer summers in America resulting in a giant electricity bill for millions and millions of AC units: -> GDP
  The European getting 10° in January and 25° in July for free: no GDP
  Americans employing minimum wage workers for all sorts of services stoping just short from paying some poor black dude to wipe their ass at the McDonalds rest room: -> GDP
  The European being capable of performing such tasks themselves: -> no GDP
  American prisons: -> GDP
  American elections causing billions in total spending (despite the poor objective quality of the product (like accessability, prevention of fraud, reexaminable documentation etc.)): -> GDP
  Paying 2 million people for essentially nothing but bullying people and destroying stuff: -> GDP

*Before you object: Yes, it is a badly paying job. Statistically she had the job that paid better than her husbands before she married him or before she met him or before they got kids... whatever...

The list goes on and on.

But yeah, sure: Pay 100 bucks for let's say... a big rock and then pay your unemployed neighbor to roll it around your house all day while you are at work. Then pay your other neighbor to do some gardening and repair your damaged lawn.
Then come back here and tell kronic and Sarmatian and me about your fabulous GDP.

Have fun.

I'll be like totally unproductive and lay in the sun or have sex or eat some cake i made myself, while you do that.

(Yeah sure i bough flour and eggs and used stuff i had at home to bake a cake that weights a pound, so that helped GDP. True. But compare that to 3 Cookies at Subway...
Heck from the standpoint of "productivity" the damn box of flour isn't even worth the effort of the cashier moving it over the register...

Speaking of registers:
A nice way to increase German GDP would be to hire some moron to bag our groceries. Particularly so since most German grandmas would probably hit that moron with their purse. Resulting in a) lawsuits b) medical bills c) educational movies trying to stop grannys from doing that, all of which increases GDP despite the exercise as a whole being utterly unproductive and quite idiotic.

Originally Posted by Cutlass

The US has ~4 times the population and 27 times the land.

That's not Europe.
That's roughly Germany.

Anyway...
General productivity (as in "GDP per hours worked") is mostly a reflection of policies, habits and regulations regarding what tasks people typically do themselfs, what tasks people typically do for free or without accounting for the activity in any way, and how regulations and workfare and stuff like that affect the minimal productivity for being employed.
The latter is particularly relevant to the change in the original graph past 2007:

Originally Posted by Godwynn

That sharp bending of the curve past 2007 is nothing else than marginally productive people not being employed anymore i.e. soaring unemployment (in the US).
If this is a sign of American superiority it is rather curious that roughly 90% of Americans want the President and Congress to reverse that bend in that curve.
They don't phrase their request like that, but ultimately that's precisely what people demand.

Originally Posted by Godwynn

Amerika, du hast es besser—als unser Kontinent, der alte. - Goethe

Hell, von Goethe knew it when we were 60 years old. The same holds true today.

Peace playa!

I thought like...

"Uhm. Damn. I'm a lazy stupid idiot. I should probably know this. Let's be a lazy idiot and google this! This can't possibly end well for Godwynn..."

And of course it doesn't!

• Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1827)
  
  Den Vereinigten Staaten
  
  Amerika, du hast es besser
  Als unser Kontinent, das alte,
  Hast keine verfallene Schlösser
  Und keine Basalte.
  
  Dich stört nicht im Innern,
  Zu lebendiger Zeit,
  Unnützes Erinnern
  Und vergeblicher Streit.
  
  Benutzt die Gegenwart mit Glück!
  Und wenn nun eure Kinder dichten,
  Bewahre sie ein gut Geschick
  Vor Ritter-, Räuber- und Gespenstergeschichten.

A 185 years later that has a lot of unintentional irony...

I <3 your idealism none the less

[Winner]

Originally Posted by VRWCAgent

Um, America was formed by plate tectonics, glaciers, erosion, etc.

Nonsense, every good American knows that the so-called "ice age" would have ended well before the Earth was made by God

Originally Posted by metatron

This again?

Spoiler:

You know how patently ridiculous this is?

GDP does not reflect any form of net quality of life. It does by and large reflect efforts vaguely directed at increasing quality of life.
These efforts can be vain or outright counterproductive. They none the less are accounted for by GDP.
The efforts could also be perfectly superflous as in working very hard to get something others get for free or something even you could have for free...
...or working very hard to get something that you subjectively want but that doesn't objectively improve your quality of life on any reasonable objective measure.

Of course the contrast between western continental Europe (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany etc.) on the one hand and the US on the other hand regarding pointless nonsense being a part of the GDP could hardly be any more stark.

An example:
On average (grossly generalizing here, bear with me^^) continental western Europeans have the tendency to construct rather small but solid dwellings, that are well isolated and close to their workplace and their sources of everyday needs, like the place where they shop for groceries.
Americans (again: on average) do quite the opposite. To Europeans it frequently seems like they actually do that on purpose. They are really hellbent on moving into a giant house made of cardboard as far away from their job as possible and with precisely zero retail within a two-mile radius.

The diverging habits about this alone catastrophically increase US GDP compared to European GDP without anything really being accomplished (well, apart from living really far away from inner city black people).

• The gas the American burns on his longer commute: -> GDP
  The talk radio insuring that he will be fed up with people and angry when he arrives at work: -> GDP
  Giant bills for superfluous heating and electricity: -> GDP
  3-mile ride to the supermarket: -> GDP
  The European walking to the grocery store: -> no GDP
  The American joining a health club to compensate for not walking to the grocery store: -> GDP

...of course this trend continues through all aspects of life...

• The Americans wife having a 35 hours a week badly paying job: -> GDP*
  That wife hiring a babysitter: -> GDP*
  The babysitter driving 20 miles "accross town": -> GDP
  The typical German mom having no job or a 17 hours a week job chatting with some other moms at the playground in the sun at the same time: -> no GDP
  The American rebuilding his giant cardboard house after stuff happened to it (hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes, mold, termites etc.): -> GDP
  The European not having any of that to worry about: -> no GDP
  Harsher winters in America despite the latitude: -> GDP
  Warmer summers in America resulting in a giant electricity bill for millions and millions of AC units: -> GDP
  The European getting 10° in January and 25° in July for free: no GDP
  Americans employing minimum wage workers for all sorts of services stoping just short from paying some poor black dude to wipe their ass at the McDonalds rest room: -> GDP
  The European being capable of performing such tasks themselves: -> no GDP
  American prisons: -> GDP
  American elections causing billions in total spending (despite the poor objective quality of the product (like accessability, prevention of fraud, reexaminable documentation etc.)): -> GDP
  Paying 2 million people for essentially nothing but bullying people and destroying stuff: -> GDP

*Before you object: Yes, it is a badly paying job. Statistically she had the job that paid better than her husbands before she married him or before she met him or before they got kids... whatever...

The list goes on and on.

But yeah, sure: Pay 100 bucks for let's say... a big rock and then pay your unemployed neighbor to roll it around your house all day while you are at work. Then pay your other neighbor to do some gardening and repair your damaged lawn.
Then come back here and tell kronic and Sarmatian and me about your fabulous GDP.

Have fun.

I'll be like totally unproductive and lay in the sun or have sex or eat some cake i made myself, while you do that.

(Yeah sure i bough flour and eggs and used stuff i had at home to bake a cake that weights a pound, so that helped GDP. True. But compare that to 3 Cookies at Subway...
Heck from the standpoint of "productivity" the damn box of flour isn't even worth the effort of the cashier moving it over the register...

Speaking of registers:
A nice way to increase German GDP would be to hire some moron to bag our groceries. Particularly so since most German grandmas would probably hit that moron with their purse. Resulting in a) lawsuits b) medical bills c) educational movies trying to stop grannys from doing that, all of which increases GDP despite the exercise as a whole being utterly unproductive and quite idiotic.

That's not Europe.
That's roughly Germany.

Anyway...
General productivity (as in "GDP per hours worked") is mostly a reflection of policies, habits and regulations regarding what tasks people typically do themselfs, what tasks people typically do for free or without accounting for the activity in any way, and how regulations and workfare and stuff like that affect the minimal productivity for being employed.
The latter is particularly relevant to the change in the original graph past 2007:

That sharp bending of the curve past 2007 is nothing else than marginally productive people not being employed anymore i.e. soaring unemployment (in the US).
If this is a sign of American superiority it is rather curious that roughly 90% of Americans want the President and Congress to reverse that bend in that curve.
They don't phrase their request like that, but ultimately that's precisely what people demand.


I thought like...

"Uhm. Damn. I'm a lazy stupid idiot. I should probably know this. Let's be a lazy idiot and google this! This can't possibly end well for Godwynn..."

And of course it doesn't!

• Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1827)
  
  Den Vereinigten Staaten
  
  Amerika, du hast es besser
  Als unser Kontinent, das alte,
  Hast keine verfallene Schlösser
  Und keine Basalte.
  
  Dich stört nicht im Innern,
  Zu lebendiger Zeit,
  Unnützes Erinnern
  Und vergeblicher Streit.
  
  Benutzt die Gegenwart mit Glück!
  Und wenn nun eure Kinder dichten,
  Bewahre sie ein gut Geschick
  Vor Ritter-, Räuber- und Gespenstergeschichten.

A 185 years later that has a lot of unintentional irony...

I <3 your idealism none the less

This post made my day

Well done

[Leoreth]

Originally Posted by VRWCAgent

Um, America was formed by plate tectonics, glaciers, erosion, etc.

Yeah, this is why your conservative politicians like to promote American core values like plate tectonics and erosion

[Godwynn]

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by metatron

This again?

You know how patently ridiculous this is?

GDP does not reflect any form of net quality of life. It does by and large reflect efforts vaguely directed at increasing quality of life.
These efforts can be vain or outright counterproductive. They none the less are accounted for by GDP.
The efforts could also be perfectly superflous as in working very hard to get something others get for free or something even you could have for free...
...or working very hard to get something that you subjectively want but that doesn't objectively improve your quality of life on any reasonable objective measure.

Of course the contrast between western continental Europe (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany etc.) on the one hand and the US on the other hand regarding pointless nonsense being a part of the GDP could hardly be any more stark.

An example:
On average (grossly generalizing here, bear with me^^) continental western Europeans have the tendency to construct rather small but solid dwellings, that are well isolated and close to their workplace and their sources of everyday needs, like the place where they shop for groceries.
Americans (again: on average) do quite the opposite. To Europeans it frequently seems like they actually do that on purpose. They are really hellbent on moving into a giant house made of cardboard as far away from their job as possible and with precisely zero retail within a two-mile radius.

The diverging habits about this alone catastrophically increase US GDP compared to European GDP without anything really being accomplished (well, apart from living really far away from inner city black people).

• The gas the American burns on his longer commute: -> GDP
  The talk radio insuring that he will be fed up with people and angry when he arrives at work: -> GDP
  Giant bills for superfluous heating and electricity: -> GDP
  3-mile ride to the supermarket: -> GDP
  The European walking to the grocery store: -> no GDP
  The American joining a health club to compensate for not walking to the grocery store: -> GDP

...of course this trend continues through all aspects of life...

• The Americans wife having a 35 hours a week badly paying job: -> GDP*
  That wife hiring a babysitter: -> GDP*
  The babysitter driving 20 miles "accross town": -> GDP
  The typical German mom having no job or a 17 hours a week job chatting with some other moms at the playground in the sun at the same time: -> no GDP
  The American rebuilding his giant cardboard house after stuff happened to it (hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes, mold, termites etc.): -> GDP
  The European not having any of that to worry about: -> no GDP
  Harsher winters in America despite the latitude: -> GDP
  Warmer summers in America resulting in a giant electricity bill for millions and millions of AC units: -> GDP
  The European getting 10° in January and 25° in July for free: no GDP
  Americans employing minimum wage workers for all sorts of services stoping just short from paying some poor black dude to wipe their ass at the McDonalds rest room: -> GDP
  The European being capable of performing such tasks themselves: -> no GDP
  American prisons: -> GDP
  American elections causing billions in total spending (despite the poor objective quality of the product (like accessability, prevention of fraud, reexaminable documentation etc.)): -> GDP
  Paying 2 million people for essentially nothing but bullying people and destroying stuff: -> GDP

*Before you object: Yes, it is a badly paying job. Statistically she had the job that paid better than her husbands before she married him or before she met him or before they got kids... whatever...

The list goes on and on.

But yeah, sure: Pay 100 bucks for let's say... a big rock and then pay your unemployed neighbor to roll it around your house all day while you are at work. Then pay your other neighbor to do some gardening and repair your damaged lawn.
Then come back here and tell kronic and Sarmatian and me about your fabulous GDP.

Have fun.

I'll be like totally unproductive and lay in the sun or have sex or eat some cake i made myself, while you do that.

(Yeah sure i bough flour and eggs and used stuff i had at home to bake a cake that weights a pound, so that helped GDP. True. But compare that to 3 Cookies at Subway...
Heck from the standpoint of "productivity" the damn box of flour isn't even worth the effort of the cashier moving it over the register...

Speaking of registers:
A nice way to increase German GDP would be to hire some moron to bag our groceries. Particularly so since most German grandmas would probably hit that moron with their purse. Resulting in a) lawsuits b) medical bills c) educational movies trying to stop grannys from doing that, all of which increases GDP despite the exercise as a whole being utterly unproductive and quite idiotic.

That's not Europe.
That's roughly Germany.

Anyway...
General productivity (as in "GDP per hours worked") is mostly a reflection of policies, habits and regulations regarding what tasks people typically do themselfs, what tasks people typically do for free or without accounting for the activity in any way, and how regulations and workfare and stuff like that affect the minimal productivity for being employed.
The latter is particularly relevant to the change in the original graph past 2007:

That sharp bending of the curve past 2007 is nothing else than marginally productive people not being employed anymore i.e. soaring unemployment (in the US).
If this is a sign of American superiority it is rather curious that roughly 90% of Americans want the President and Congress to reverse that bend in that curve.
They don't phrase their request like that, but ultimately that's precisely what people demand.


I thought like...

"Uhm. Damn. I'm a lazy stupid idiot. I should probably know this. Let's be a lazy idiot and google this! This can't possibly end well for Godwynn..."

And of course it doesn't!

• Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1827)
  
  Den Vereinigten Staaten
  
  Amerika, du hast es besser
  Als unser Kontinent, das alte,
  Hast keine verfallene Schlösser
  Und keine Basalte.
  
  Dich stört nicht im Innern,
  Zu lebendiger Zeit,
  Unnützes Erinnern
  Und vergeblicher Streit.
  
  Benutzt die Gegenwart mit Glück!
  Und wenn nun eure Kinder dichten,
  Bewahre sie ein gut Geschick
  Vor Ritter-, Räuber- und Gespenstergeschichten.

A 185 years later that has a lot of unintentional irony...

I <3 your idealism none the less

Oh sorry bro I didn't have time to read your post because I was on my way to work in a steel skyscraper (American invention) and posting to the internet (American invention) at the same time.

If you guys had more GDP then the bond vigilantes wouldn't be tearing your continent apart.

[Leoreth]

Originally Posted by Godwynn

If you guys had more GDP then the bond vigilantes wouldn't be tearing your continent apart.

Haha, no.

[Godwynn]

Originally Posted by Leoreth

Haha, no.

If Greece's GDP was €1 trillion their €350 billion debt wouldn't be a problem.

BOOM QED

[Leoreth]

If their debt was 0€ it would also be no problem

If Greece had a larger GDP, it would've loaned more money, and assuming the same economic circumstances, the problem would be the same. After all, the US with their huge GDP also have a proportionally huge amount of debt, don't they? Spain has less debt than the US compared to their respective GDPs, but pays much higher interest rates.

How does that fit into your theory?

[Godwynn]

Originally Posted by Leoreth

If Greece had a larger GDP, it would've loaned more money, and assuming the same economic circumstances, the problem would be the same. After all, the US with their huge GDP also have a proportionally huge amount of debt, don't they? Spain has less debt than the US compared to their respective GDPs, but pays much higher interest rates.

How does that fit into your theory?

The Americans, being awesome, are into a recovery and have their own currency.

The Spaniards are at the mercy of their German overlords.

Spoiler:

[kronic]

Originally Posted by Godwynn

The Americans, being awesome, are into a recovery and have their own currency.

You have your own currency but certainly not a recovery.