How much of the economy is propped up by transfer payments and military related expense, all funded by borrowing?
Once diverse regional economies like the NY Metro Area are increasingly dependent on a narrow set of industry. IMO, the future is hard to predict and is likely to diverge from the 20th century.
Economic statistics for the US with fully disclosed methodologies are readily available. US military spending in 2016 was 3.3% of GPD, according to the World Bank. [1] New York’s economy is more industrially diverse than average (ranked 17 out of 51) with Long Island as the most diverse county in the state. [2] I realize that fed report is out of date, but as of 2016, the NY Metro area itself had a GDP of nearly $1.7 trillion, making it one of the larger economies in the world. [3]
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2...
[2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/regio...
[3] https://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_metro/gdp_metr...
The US clearly engages in the sort of behaviour that was described as trickery. The state is massively indebted and piling on huge deficits each year, and the only thing that keeps lenders lending money is this belief that the US will always repay its debt. Meanwhile the US deficit is used as a never ending source of free money created out of thin air that's injected into the economy, thus contributing to artificially inflate the volume of money being exchanged (i.e., the GDP)
If you compare the economy of 1967 to 2017, it’s more telling for NYC. Upstate is even more dramatic. The economy in central/western NY imploded.
The trickery is around the massive debt and the use of the dollar as a reserve currency. 100 dollar bills represent 80% of currency in circulation are like the equivalent of beaver bonds overseas.