Monday, February 5, 2018

Order of Operations

How much did the economy grow in 2011?

METHOD #1: INFLATION-ADJUSTED CHANGE IN GDP

METHOD #2: CHANGE IN INFLATION-ADJUSTED GDP

3 comments:

The Arthurian said...

Order of Operations
For Method #1 with GDP, I am subtracting 2010 dollars from 2011 dollars. (I am subtracting the 2010 quantity of 2011 dollars from the 2011 GDP. This is clearly wrong.)

For Method #2 with GDP, I am subtracting 2009 dollars from 2009 dollars. This is correct.

For Method #1 with debt, I am subtracting 2010 dollars from 2011 dollars IN ORDER TO GET 2011 DOLLARS ONLY. Then I adjust the 2011 dollars to base year dollars, where I can add them up fairly. This is correct for debt, I am quite confident.

Method #1 works for GDP but not for debt.
Method #2 works for debt but not for GDP
Or so I now think.

The Arthurian said...

That would be weird, Art.

The Arthurian said...

Not weird. Just seems weird because everybody thinks it's okay to inflation-adjust debt the same way we inflation-adjust GDP.