Re:Britain’s Productivity Decline Is the Worst in 250 Years
by tonyedgecombe on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @07:04AM
(#22234617)
It only looks straighter because the X-Axis units are larger. We still end up at the same destination, anaemic growth.
Re:Britain’s Productivity Decline Is the Worst in 250 Years
by thu2111 on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @09:47AM
(#22236067)
I guess this gets us into the question of what is "anaemic". To me that means "much lower than it used to be" which isn't the case. What are you comparing against here? What would not anaemic look like?
The differences we're talking about here are very small. GDP calculation is meanwhile way less precise than economists like to pretend.
For instance GDP per capita for the UK is frequently quoted as if it's a meaningful statistic. But ONS population statistics are labelled as "experimental". In other words the government doesn't know how many people are in the country, making GDP per capita (dividing GDP by population) a meaningless value.
Modern GDP is meant to include illegal activity, i.e. something governments try to wipe out when they find it. How are you meant to precisely add up the total value of all illegally exchanged goods and services? It can only ever be a wild guess.
UK GDP stats for Q1 are almost always wrong and get revised later in the year. This error is systematic yet it never gets corrected.
What I'm getting at here is that such a tiny trend in a field as unreliable as economics doesn't let us conclude very much.