The Economic Strangling Of Joe Sixpack
Econintersect LLC | Nov 18, 2012 03:38AM ET
I am not a lover of GDP as THE measure of the economy. GDP measures money movement across sectors of the economy that economists have determined is “productive” growth. Nothing is wrong with GDP as “one of many” economic measures which can be used – but it is not an all knowing measure of an economy.
When you use any broad measure, at times it misleads.
Broad lagging measures of the economy such as GDP show recovery and a return to prosperity [please, I know growth is slowing and we are running at the edge of a "fiscal cliff"]. The above graph shows GDP per capita, and if trends were to hold – within a year the “average” American should be as well off as before the Great Recession.
An “average” is adding up all the numbers, then dividing by how many numbers there are. The median is the central point of a data set – or the middle numbers in a sorted list of numbers. As an example, a data set of 20000, 20000, 20000, 20000 and 3000000 would have an average of 616,000, but a median of 20,000.
The data from the recently released US Census Click here to view the scorecard table below with active hyperlinks.
Weekly Economic Release Scorecard:
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