Hacker News Reader

Comment by rogerkirkness | Hacker News Reader

Counter argument: we are averaging together two things, which includes a lack of natural world progress with massive deflation in anything computer bound. ChatGPT vs. healthcare costs. Taken together it is worse because the latter is more important, but there's been real deflation in amount of work per capital dollar.

View on HN

You are simply describing the fact that when we speak of growth of the GDP, we are averaging millions of things together. How else would you measure economic growth in a modern, diverse economy? That some sectors boom while others fade is well known, but we only care about the final aggregate. That final aggregate did well for most of the period from 1870 to 1970 (with the exception of the 1930s). But since 1970, that aggregate has done poorly

> That some sectors boom while others fade is well known, but we only care about the final aggregate.

Why? I really don’t think it’s a good idea to try to measure something as complex and multi-faceted as the evolution of an economy with a scalar.

>> I really don’t think it’s a good idea to try to measure something as complex and multi-faceted as the evolution of an economy with a scalar.

Right? Even if we look at a single number, why not a distribution of that rather than just a total/average?

I think economics is an area that needs a LOT of work. Why we expect the fed to achieve 2 objectives (regulating the economy and inflation, and maybe unemployment) by turning a single knob (interest rate) is really strange to me. Meanwhile, congress thinks they can simply legislate outcomes...

GDP going down because things we want in the form of software getting cheaper is a good thing. The assumption that 'GDP going up is good' is not true in good deflation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com