Euro/US GDP Charts

fluxo

The GDP per head growth figures are pretty disappointing. It looks as though we may have lost about a decade of growth in that respect. I don't know whether migration has been a cause of that. It's possible.

This is an interesting chart from The Economist:

                                                                                                                                               

Maybe it's just a statistical quirk, but it looks like the upper line starts tracking just above the middle line towards the right. A bit like a piece of string draped over the rightmost peaks and troughs.

domtheone

I'd be amazed if anyone would suggest that it's not a significant factor.

nheather

Migration is not a bad thing as such.

The problem that the UK has is that immigration is predominently unskilled or low-skilled labour, whilst emigration is predominently skilled labour.

This means that we are experiencing a brain-drain, losing people who typically generate good GDP contributions, high tax payers and low benefit claiments whilst gaining people who are the opposite.

Cheers,

Nigel

Will21st

from the look of things we will indeed overtake Germany as Europe's biggest economy.

fluxo

The connection between this post and the rest of the thread is tenuous, to say the least, but anyway:

I was looking for deficit statistics and I found this report based on numbers from the ONS & OBR:

http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05745/SN05745.pdf

Well, it's all a bit curious. Take a look at page 6 for example. There are some %GDP and accompanying absolute amounts in £bn. So it should be possible to calculate the GDP in each case. Let's try that for row 1, labelled with financial year numbers 1987/88.

The public set net debt is given as £167.4 bn. That is supposedly 31.0% of GDP. So the GDP should be £167.4/0.31 bn = £540 bn. So far so good. Now let's try the same thing for the gross debt interest payments. These are given as £18.4 bn or 3.6% of GDP. Therefore, the GDP figure ought to be £18.4/0.036 bn = £511 bn. It's a different amount!

And going back to the public sector net debt again, but this time for 1988/89, we find the GDP is equal to £153.7/0.256 bn = £600 bn, which is 11.1% higher than the 1987/88 figure. Obviously, the economy didn't grow 11% in one year. So that looks iffy.

What on earth is going on with these figures?

EarthRod

Stats are a fairly reliable indicator, maybe even a rough indicator, but not to be taken too seriously - a bit like polls.

Depending on how the framework is defined will determine the statistical results. Something as complicated as an economy's debt/GDP/deficit etc must make pinning down the framework a little difficult.

thegeby

This is probably the best measure of economic performance. I wouldn't vouch for any of the particular data sets, but they are trying to look at the right thing.

List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia

(I don't think any of you believe that 1973 was a great year for growth, but it was spectacular for inflation )