Black Friday economics

This chart was published recently. Let’s discuss it a bit, on this traditional Black Friday, so named because post-Thanksgiving/pre-Christmas sales are often the difference for retailers between “being in the black” (making a profit) and drowning in red ink for the year:

Remember that the G7 are the richest and most productive nations (empires) in the world. Also note, this is NOT per-capita income but rather Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person.

Perhaps the worst thing about this chart is how GDP is calculated. It includes not just goods produced: tangible products. It includes intangibles: services as well as goods. And specifically, legal goods and services. And (we note with great disgust) it includes government expenditures. The Fed tells us this: The four components of gross domestic product are personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports.

Which is the reason the monstrous District of Criminals has the highest per capita GDP of any American territory. More than twice the amount of the richest real State. Because the FedGov (and all its various elements) steals money not just from American people, families, and businesses but around the world. And from the future. And then spends it like an entire fleet of drunken sailors.

GDP calculations do not include either the quality nor the real demand (like, you know, market demand) for the goods and services produced. Because we must remember that many – even most – of the government “services” provided by the FedGov are forced on people. And businesses. And other countries.

But at the same time, this chart does point out some good, interesting things. Despite the obvious parasitism of the FedGov (and State and local governments), the Fifty States’ GDP per capita on average is nearly 60% higher than that of the 2nd richest nation in the world (our tyranny-burdened neighbor to the north, Canada).

Indeed, only two of those nations are doing better than the poorest American nation (State), Mississippi. Whoa! We are told constantly that the US is far behind the European Union as far as quality of life, wealth, productivity, and social goods, but the three EU members in the G7 are about the same as Mississippi.

Do you suppose that these States are doing something right? That perhaps it has something to do with free markets and individual liberty – even though we have far less of those horrible things than we did a half-century ago? Just maybe?

Of course, this doesn’t show any idea of the disparities of income, of wealth, within a jurisdiction – and we know that is of course a major problem in places like DC, NY, and MA. Anti-Americans will claim that we have (here in the States) less social mobility than other countries, just as we fall short in many other things. But when we look at comparisons like this, we can see that we are indeed blessed in so many economic ways. Virtually the poorest of the poor in these States are well above the average standard of living for the average person in hundreds of countries around the world. Yes, even the homeless and those living on Indian Reservations, when compared to the poor and downtrodden of so many African and Latin American and Asian countries.

Are we here at TPOL wrong in ascribing this to an attitude and effort to get and keep liberty in these States, no matter how poorly we are doing that job? Seemingly, does that explain why so many millions of people flee to these States, and so few from these States flee to someplace else? (And the vast majority of those wealthy?)

Think about these things.

Read More…