This is an excellent point; using the actual working population to calculate per capita GDP provides important insight into understanding trends, especially with regard to Japan. That said, you might want to consider applying this to productive GDP instead of merely GDP calculated at purchasing power parity (PPP). Productive GDP excludes services; not because services are unimportant, but because they are much harder to effectively value, and often include very dubious components like imputed rental value or mandatory insurance.
This is looking at immigration in a way that is too uncharitable. A poor Mexican comes to the US. Then you say he brings the US GDP per capita down. But it doesn’t make Americans who were already here poorer. You might even want to judge his income relative to what it is in Mexico and get growth from that. Poor immigrants can bring GDP per capita down but make natives better off by moving them up into more productive jobs like in management roles. So America bringing in a lot of immigrants and growing more per capita is quite impressive.
Nope. The Mexican is a net fiscal sink that makes me poorer. He also drives up the cost of housing and votes for leftist which makes government policy worse.
If you ignore downward pressure on wages, increased competition for housing, and the fact that Mexican immigrants are a net fiscal burden, then yeah, maybe the average person doesn't get "poorer," but these things cannot be ignored, of course.
If Sweden doubles their population of swedes somehow - on average they are not going to be much richer.
So it's difficult to see how doubling it with Mexicans would actually make them better off.
In reality in the modern world borders are porous, and Mexicans can work in Mexico, even in American factories, we can buy from them and then we don't have to support them with infrastructure, healthcare, education etc that they will use but pay a lower percentage for.
The Saudis etc obviously have a similar system but 'within-country' even there they have to pay for the infrastructure that low paid migrants will use.
> But it doesn’t make Americans who were already here poorer.
False. A less productive immigrant not only contributes to the economy, but also consumes public services (healthcare, welfare, infrastructure etc). On average, a less productive (i.e., poorer) individual consumes more than they produce.
So while the overall economic pie grows due to their contribution, their consumption exceeds their input, reducing the per capita share available to others.
What you're saying could work in theory - IF the immigrant’s lower contribution were offset by an equal or greater increase in output from the native worker promoted to a higher role AND the immigrant consumed no more than what they contributed. Which isn't the case.
No one ever measure all the services immigrants and their children receive some get a biased picture. I’d love to see stats on welfare usage, including food banks, free healthcare at ERS and health centers, free and reduced lunch for those children, etc. so many non-cash benefits that are difficult to quantify that get ignored.
The foreign-born share in the US seems to be lower than in Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden etc so I guess according to that way of thinking US performance is overestimated compared to other Germanic countries? And that's not even taking into account the non-working nature of a large proportion of migrants to western Europe. Man, what is the secret of all these Germanic countries that are super productive and successful, especially if you adjust for their less-productive ethnics?
Germanicism in one country would be nice as a control group, but why bother with that when the scientific truth of diversity and open borders is obvious from "line go up". Sure, the Soviet Union had impressive growth periods too, but this type of utopian egalitarianism is totally working.
By the way, if it's good to bring in low-skill labor because it helps move natives up into more productive management roles(until the company/industry becomes an ethnic niche), then bringing in high-skill labor that take management roles from natives and lock them down in less productive jobs must be bad, all else equal. (Seems like a lot of people with experience of Indian management would agree with you.) You can say that increasing the average skill level makes up for that, but then low-skill labor that brings down that average ought to be a net-negative, all else equal?
If the relative position of an individual is more important than the average level of a country, why is migration pressure towards countries where the average level is higher, rather than towards countries where individual's relative level is higher? Would you rather live in a country with 100 IQ managers and 90 IQ workers, or a country with 110 IQ managers and 100 IQ workers?
I don't know about that but to be clear I'm not necessarily saying Germanic countries are all that different from France or Finland in terms of outcomes, Germanic countries are just a good example of consistent success that's less of a mouthful than "countries with predominant ancestry from northwestern Europe".
this is a lot of analysis of a fundamentally flawed metric--GDP. for the life of me I don't understand how or why it is even a thing. E.g., this weeks GDP took a hit because in part many US buyers front loaded imports to avoid tariffs. so imports and exports are counted. as is (ta-da) government spending. I am not an economist (at least I have that going for me), but this metric is pretty much meaningless for the purposes you seem to be pursuing.
Macroeconomic statistics in particular tend to mix up a lot of apples and oranges counting them all the same, and GDP is certainly a classic example of this. Nonetheless even GDP can tell us something, if we just look at trends over time. By contrast comparing statistics from multiple countries tends to be borderline useless because the calculation methods and sources are so different. Hence the attraction of comparing Productive GDP instead — see above comment.
> it is doubtful they are twice as productive, or even more productive at all.
Speaking from America, it's quite plausible among knowledge workers. If anything, the productivity difference is more like 5x. In engineering offices Boomers outnumber everyone else combined by 5x. (The exception is IT where you see Boomers, Xers, and Millennials in roughly equal numbers.) If we assume this dwindles to parity in labor-heavy industries, I can still imagine it averaging out to 2x over all industries.
For reference, it takes about 10 years of experience to become useful as an engineer. This is also true in IT, but many kids start learning that stuff very early now, and the cost of getting real experience, like building computers and writing scripts, is much lower than in other technical professions.
Well, before all of those adjustments one would recognise that growth itself is a faulty metric, and the true measure is deviation from the autoregressive path, taking care of China et al.
This is an excellent point; using the actual working population to calculate per capita GDP provides important insight into understanding trends, especially with regard to Japan. That said, you might want to consider applying this to productive GDP instead of merely GDP calculated at purchasing power parity (PPP). Productive GDP excludes services; not because services are unimportant, but because they are much harder to effectively value, and often include very dubious components like imputed rental value or mandatory insurance.
We published an extensive article in June 2023 about why this measurement is more meaningful; it's here: https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/chinas-shocking-worldwide-economic.
One of these days we will publish some updated calculations based on the latest numbers, but the situation has not changed much.
This is looking at immigration in a way that is too uncharitable. A poor Mexican comes to the US. Then you say he brings the US GDP per capita down. But it doesn’t make Americans who were already here poorer. You might even want to judge his income relative to what it is in Mexico and get growth from that. Poor immigrants can bring GDP per capita down but make natives better off by moving them up into more productive jobs like in management roles. So America bringing in a lot of immigrants and growing more per capita is quite impressive.
Nope. The Mexican is a net fiscal sink that makes me poorer. He also drives up the cost of housing and votes for leftist which makes government policy worse.
Do the kinds of politicians that Hanania likes, like Mitt Romney, even have a chance of getting elected with current demographics? In what scenario?
Mitt Romney could t get elected when he ram years ago. I also doubt Richard voted for him. Left wing loves loser Republicans.
If you ignore downward pressure on wages, increased competition for housing, and the fact that Mexican immigrants are a net fiscal burden, then yeah, maybe the average person doesn't get "poorer," but these things cannot be ignored, of course.
Economically illiterate drivel.
Maybe if the only economist you listen to is Noah Smith
If Sweden doubles their population of swedes somehow - on average they are not going to be much richer.
So it's difficult to see how doubling it with Mexicans would actually make them better off.
In reality in the modern world borders are porous, and Mexicans can work in Mexico, even in American factories, we can buy from them and then we don't have to support them with infrastructure, healthcare, education etc that they will use but pay a lower percentage for.
The Saudis etc obviously have a similar system but 'within-country' even there they have to pay for the infrastructure that low paid migrants will use.
Uncharitable? This is basically saying manipulate the numbers to fit my narrative.
It does the US no good if we compare an immigrants wages to his native country for our GDP purposes.
> But it doesn’t make Americans who were already here poorer.
False. A less productive immigrant not only contributes to the economy, but also consumes public services (healthcare, welfare, infrastructure etc). On average, a less productive (i.e., poorer) individual consumes more than they produce.
So while the overall economic pie grows due to their contribution, their consumption exceeds their input, reducing the per capita share available to others.
What you're saying could work in theory - IF the immigrant’s lower contribution were offset by an equal or greater increase in output from the native worker promoted to a higher role AND the immigrant consumed no more than what they contributed. Which isn't the case.
No one ever measure all the services immigrants and their children receive some get a biased picture. I’d love to see stats on welfare usage, including food banks, free healthcare at ERS and health centers, free and reduced lunch for those children, etc. so many non-cash benefits that are difficult to quantify that get ignored.
The foreign-born share in the US seems to be lower than in Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden etc so I guess according to that way of thinking US performance is overestimated compared to other Germanic countries? And that's not even taking into account the non-working nature of a large proportion of migrants to western Europe. Man, what is the secret of all these Germanic countries that are super productive and successful, especially if you adjust for their less-productive ethnics?
Germanicism in one country would be nice as a control group, but why bother with that when the scientific truth of diversity and open borders is obvious from "line go up". Sure, the Soviet Union had impressive growth periods too, but this type of utopian egalitarianism is totally working.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_immigrant_and_emigrant_population#Immigrant_population_by_destination
By the way, if it's good to bring in low-skill labor because it helps move natives up into more productive management roles(until the company/industry becomes an ethnic niche), then bringing in high-skill labor that take management roles from natives and lock them down in less productive jobs must be bad, all else equal. (Seems like a lot of people with experience of Indian management would agree with you.) You can say that increasing the average skill level makes up for that, but then low-skill labor that brings down that average ought to be a net-negative, all else equal?
If the relative position of an individual is more important than the average level of a country, why is migration pressure towards countries where the average level is higher, rather than towards countries where individual's relative level is higher? Would you rather live in a country with 100 IQ managers and 90 IQ workers, or a country with 110 IQ managers and 100 IQ workers?
France is probably a lot richer and more productive than Germany especially when you control for terrible french labour laws
I don't know about that but to be clear I'm not necessarily saying Germanic countries are all that different from France or Finland in terms of outcomes, Germanic countries are just a good example of consistent success that's less of a mouthful than "countries with predominant ancestry from northwestern Europe".
this is a lot of analysis of a fundamentally flawed metric--GDP. for the life of me I don't understand how or why it is even a thing. E.g., this weeks GDP took a hit because in part many US buyers front loaded imports to avoid tariffs. so imports and exports are counted. as is (ta-da) government spending. I am not an economist (at least I have that going for me), but this metric is pretty much meaningless for the purposes you seem to be pursuing.
Macroeconomic statistics in particular tend to mix up a lot of apples and oranges counting them all the same, and GDP is certainly a classic example of this. Nonetheless even GDP can tell us something, if we just look at trends over time. By contrast comparing statistics from multiple countries tends to be borderline useless because the calculation methods and sources are so different. Hence the attraction of comparing Productive GDP instead — see above comment.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-do-econ-journalists-keep-making/comments
https://x.com/besttrousers/status/1675965238628294656
https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1832588128084730334
I really don't understand the attitude towards resource extraction. In this day and age it is a high tech endeavor. Especially in Russia.
> it is doubtful they are twice as productive, or even more productive at all.
Speaking from America, it's quite plausible among knowledge workers. If anything, the productivity difference is more like 5x. In engineering offices Boomers outnumber everyone else combined by 5x. (The exception is IT where you see Boomers, Xers, and Millennials in roughly equal numbers.) If we assume this dwindles to parity in labor-heavy industries, I can still imagine it averaging out to 2x over all industries.
For reference, it takes about 10 years of experience to become useful as an engineer. This is also true in IT, but many kids start learning that stuff very early now, and the cost of getting real experience, like building computers and writing scripts, is much lower than in other technical professions.
Well, before all of those adjustments one would recognise that growth itself is a faulty metric, and the true measure is deviation from the autoregressive path, taking care of China et al.