in truth.

Statistics lie. And this is one of those places...

The Administration is claiming that the GDP is growing at about a 2-3% rate, and that that is good. The economy is growing, right? Wrong.

Inflation has been about 4-5%. That means the 2-3% growth was all due to inflation, not actual growth, and was actually negative! That’s right, our GDP is getting amller at about 2% a year! And the population has actually been growing too. So the actual GDP per person has been falling. Like a rock. That’s average output per person, going down.

Of course, that’s assuming that the GDP number isn’t actually a little lower than they claim, and that the real inflation number isn’t actually a little higher too. Assuming they are paints a picture that isn’t pretty.

There’s also the productivity index, which claims to measure output per worker. This, they claim is going up too. How can that be? Well, we’re working longer hours (20% more. The average work week is now up to 47 hours!). But more of us are not working at all. This index only counts people who are working.

So, the numbers generally agree. Taken separately they don’t look bad. But when taken in context, as a whole, the economy is shrinking, the job market is shrinking, and fewer people are working harder than ever before. Makes sense to me. That’s exactly what one would expect from “Free Trade”.

You have to know how to interpret the numbers...