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Comment by maratc | Hacker News Reader

    U.S. tech companies reportedly lost a combined $4 trillion in value this year. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the combined GDPs of Turkey, Argentina, and Switzerland.

This comparison of value to value per year should probably die already.

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Could be worse, imagine if instead they framed it in amounts that the reader could actually understand.

"U.S. tech companies reportedly lost a combined $4 trillion in value this year. To put that in perspective, that’s more more than $12 000 per US citizen or $500 for everyone on Earth."

Yes go and tell the journalist the difference between and asset and an income (eg. GDP) let me know if you're successful.

Gdp is not income, it is a measure of economic activity.

Which is rather equivalent to income.

Does GDP include any asset? No. Does include the annual turnover of the economy? Yes

Is similar to the income for a person or the gross income for a company

No, turnover is not income

Omg why you don't Google instead of saying things that you know nothing about

> Turnover is the net sales generated by a business, while profit is the residual earnings of a business after all expenses have been charged against net sales

https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/what-is-the-differe...

So yes, turnover for a business is like the income for a person (and income is always before tax, after tax is called net income)

“Gross domestic product (GDP) is the standard measure of the value added created through the production of goods and services in a country during a certain period. As such, it also measures the income earned from that production, or the total amount spent on final goods and services (less imports).”

(Emphasis mine)

https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm

> As such, it also measures the income earned from that production, or the total amount spent on final goods and services (less imports).

It's my understanding that the "income" interpretation refers to tax income, because each transaction is taxed.

Take a look at your quote. It says it's also the "total amount spent on final goods and services". If you buy bread for 1€ and ham for 1€ and sell ham sandwiches for 6€, no one had income of 8€. At most, the state charged VAT on your 2€ purchases and 6€ sales.

> It's my understanding that the "income" interpretation refers to tax income

No, its aggregate income, not tax income. And its not an “interpretation” of GDP, GDP is by design a national income measure, not some other kind of measure with an income “interpretation”.

You had income of 6€, the bread seller had income of 1€, and the ham seller had income of 1€, so the three of you combined did have income of 8€.

> (...) so the three of you combined did have income of 8€.

The whole point is that that is not income, but just an aggregate value of all transactions within an economy. Money exchanged hands, which is not the same as someone's income.

You're really trying hard to disprove the definition.

GDP is the country's income. Full stop is not that hard.

Also you're wrong twice, because also the aggregated value of all the transactions of an individual sums up to something that is called income.

You're just being pedantic for no reason.

I can have many income sources: work, royalty, dividends, rent, selling books etc.

To use your analogy the are all transactions with my personal economy (made by myself, one person) and it's called: income

> Gdp is not income

GDP is the main national income measure.

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/NationalIncomeAccounts.h...

Why? Both are value per time. GDP can be computed per year, quarter, etc.

I agree it doesn't make sense if not computed over the same time period (in which case, the period should be indicated for both)

Asset price inflation isn't the same as trade. Most of that $4T never came close to being anything but an estimate for the value of something that never traded.

Interesting, is your argument that we're comparing 1a vs 2, in which case the units are compatible, as opposed to the typical wrong/misleading comparison of 1b vs 2?

1a. $4 trillion/year as rate of loss, a flow

1b. $4 trillion total change in asset value, regardless of time period involved

2. $4 trillion/year total annual GDP of some countries

The comparison shiukdn be an arbitrary collection of countries either.

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