Re:Look at median, and not mean GDP per capita
by sokoloff on Monday August 08, 2022 @07:43AM
(#32384375)
You can calculate the total GDP and divide it by the total population. You cannot (as far as I know), assign an individualized share of GDP to each person, which when summed would equal the total GDP of the country, and then find the median of that distribution.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Look at median, and not mean GDP per capita
by notahacker on Monday August 08, 2022 @09:11AM
(#32384957)
Fortunately, the author isn't proposing to do this, instead stating pretty clearly that he proposes to use an estimate of the median income, not the median contribution to GDP. So it's not really relevant, except perhaps as a critique of the HN headline.
(He also doesn't specifically say that median income = median salary, although taking sales tax revenues and profit incomes and depreciation of capital outcomes into account probably doesn't actually make much if any difference to the median income vs median salary)
though FWIW I don't think it would be impossible to estimate some measure of an individual's "income measure contribution to GDP" based on that individuals' earned income plus imputed contribution to company profits plus sales tax paid; I just don't think it'd be that useful