# Think Tank > Austrian Economics / Economic Theory >  Can the national debt exceed the Avogadro constant?

## timosman

Current debt - ¢2*10^15
Avogadro constant - 6*10^23

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## oyarde

I always thought by the time it reached annual GDP it would be problematic and faith would fail . Shows how much I know .

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## Snowball

> I always thought by the time it reached annual GDP it would be problematic and faith would fail . Shows how much I know .


 Personal Debt is part of the fake-GDP.

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## Zippyjuan

> Personal Debt is part of the fake-GDP.


link?

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## Snowball

> link?


The four components of gross domestic product are personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports.
https://www.thebalance.com/component...-chart-3306015

Mortgage debt as percent of GDP: https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2...e-debt-as.html

The GDP is a contrived, irrelevant statistic that is used to make excuses for incurring more debt. 

It is the misapplication of debt and the institution of unconstitutional creditors - the money creators - who contrive 
these equations in order to maintain their tyrannical control over American policy.

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## Zippyjuan

> The four components of gross domestic product are personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports.
> https://www.thebalance.com/component...-chart-3306015
> 
> Mortgage debt as percent of GDP: https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2...e-debt-as.html
> 
> The GDP is a contrived, irrelevant statistic that is used to make excuses for incurring more debt. 
> 
> It is the misapplication of debt and the institution of unconstitutional creditors - the money creators - who contrive 
> these equations in order to maintain their tyrannical control over American policy.


That list of components:




> 1. Personal Consumption Expenditures
> 
> 2. Business Investment
> 
> 3. Government Spending
> 
> 4. Net Exports of Goods and Services


Spending may or may not be financed via debt (as well as income or savings), but debt itself is not a component of GDP. 

"Mortgage debt as a percent of GDP" is an attempt to measure the scale of mortgage debt- it does not say that the debt is a component of GDP.

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## oyarde

I do not see how you could use mortgage debt unless you pro rated it for the term of ea loan .

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## oyarde

Interesting though since a lot of personal purchases are debt that debt is GDP which is not what I normally think of as GDP .

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## Zippyjuan

> Interesting though since a lot of personal purchases are debt that debt is GDP which is not what I normally think of as GDP .


Spending is part of GDP. Borrowing isn't.

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## Occam's Banana

> *Can the national debt exceed the Avogadro constant?*
> 
> Current debt - ¢2*10^15
> Avogadro constant - 6*10^23


That's a difference of eight orders of magnitude. Could be tough ...

But we've already covered fifteen, so we're more than halfway there (orders-of-magnitude-wise).

And this is 'Murrica - where there's a will, there's a way! Onward and upward!

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## Occam's Banana

> Spending is part of GDP. Borrowing isn't.


This is a false dichotomy - unless you are going to assert that either (1) nothing that was borrowed was spent, or (2) spending borrowed money is excluded from GDP.

Spending and borrowing are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite.

Indeed, the whole point of borrowing is to spend what was borrowed (which spending would otherwise not have occurred).

If any of what was spent was borrowed, then borrowing contributes to (i.e., is "part of"*[1]*) GDP to precisely the extent that what was borrowed was spent.

Less borrowing yields less spending. Less spending yields lower GDP. Therefore, less borrowing yields lower GDP.

More borrowing yields more spending. More spending yields higher GDP. Therefore, more borrowing yields higher GDP.



*[1]* The fact that that borrowing is not "part of" the formal definition of GDP is irrelevant. It doesn't need to be. Spending subsumes what was borrowed in order to be spent. IOW: GDP incorporates spending. Spending incorporates borrowing. Therefore, GDP incorporates borrowing.

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## Zippyjuan

> This is a false dichotomy - unless you are going to assert that either (1) nothing that was borrowed was spent, or (2) spending borrowed money is excluded from GDP.
> 
> Spending and borrowing are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite.
> 
> Indeed, the whole point of borrowing is to spend what was borrowed (which spending would otherwise not have occurred).
> 
> If any of what was spent was borrowed, then borrowing contributes to (i.e., is "part of"*[1]*) GDP to precisely the extent that what was borrowed was spent.
> 
> Less borrowing yields less spending. Less spending yields lower GDP. Therefore, less borrowing yields lower GDP.
> ...


Spending does not count where that money came from.  Yes, some could have come from borrowing.  Some comes from money earned.  Some comes from paychecks.  It could have been a gift or a prize you won. In the case of government spending, it could come from taxes collected or from borrowing.  GDP does not ask where you got the money from only what you did with it.

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## timosman

> Spending does not count where that money came from.  Yes, some could have come from borrowing.  Some comes from money earned.  Some comes from paychecks.  It could have been a gift or a prize you won. In the case of government spending, it could come from taxes collected or from borrowing.  GDP does not ask where you got the money from only what you did with it.


My sex reassignment surgery increased GDP by $50k.

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## Occam's Banana

> *Spending does not count where that money came from.*  Yes, some could have come from borrowing.  Some comes from money earned.  Some comes from paychecks.  It could have been a gift or a prize you won. In the case of government spending, it could come from taxes collected or from borrowing. * GDP does not ask where you got the money from* only what you did with it.


I know that. *That was my whole point.* 

YOU are the one who "counted" where that money came from when YOU claimed that borrowing is NOT "part of" GDP.

The definition of GDP does not say any such thing - and "borrowing" is no less a "part of" GDP than "earning" is.

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## Zippyjuan

> I know that. *That was my whole point.* 
> 
> YOU are the one who "counted" where that money came from when YOU claimed that borrowing is NOT "part of" GDP.
> 
> The definition of GDP does not say any such thing.


I am counting borrowing by saying borrowing does not count?  Confused.

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## timosman

> I am counting borrowing by saying borrowing does not count?  Confused.


An example scenario. You take a loan to buy a house for say $100k. The old owner takes the money and buys another house for the same amount. How much has the GDP increased?

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## Zippyjuan

> An example scenario. You take a loan to buy a house for say $100k. The old owner takes the money and buys another house for the same amount. How much has the GDP increased?


I bought a tool from the hardware store for $100.  He took that money to the grocery store and bought $100 worth of food.  How much did the GDP increase?

Real estate is calculated differently.  They don't count a $100k house sale as $100k worth of GDP.  Instead they look at the "rental equivilant" payment. 

https://www.nahb.org/en/research/hou...oduct-gdp.aspx




> Housing’s combined contribution to GDP generally averages 15-18%, and occurs in two basic ways:
> 
> Residential investment (averaging roughly 3-5% of GDP), which includes construction of new single-family and multifamily structures, residential remodeling, production of manufactured homes, and brokers’ fees. 
> 
> Consumption spending on housing services (averaging roughly 12-13% of GDP), which includes gross rents and utilities paid by renters, as well as owners' imputed rents and utility payments.
> 
> Including owners'* imputed rent (an estimate of how much it would cost to rent owner-occupied units)* in GDP has long been a standard practice in national income accounting. Were owners' imputed rent not included, an increase in the homeownership rate would cause GDP to decline.

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## Occam's Banana

> Originally Posted by Occam's Banana
> 
> 
> YOU are the one who "counted" where that  money came from when YOU claimed that borrowing is NOT "part of"  GDP.
> 
> 
> I am counting borrowing by saying borrowing does not count?  Confused.


Are you really that bad at reading comprehension - or do you just pretend to be when it helps you to evade the point?

I did not say that you were "counting borrowing." I said that you "counted" where money came from in order to exclude one source of it (namely, borrowing) from being "part of" GDP.

But as you yourself admitted (and as I said was my point to begin with), "spending does not count where that money came from".

GDP does not exclude the spending of borrowed money. Thus does borrowing become "part of" GDP.

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## idiom

Who are these people borrowing money and not spending it?

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## oyarde

So the real GDP is less than reported since it includes borrowed monies , not very comforting .

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## r3volution 3.0

> fake-GDP.


There are problems with GDP, but it's not quite "fake."

Problems:
1. It isn't and can't be a measure of "total utility," since value isn't cardinal and can't be summed.
2. Even given it's theoretical limitations, it isn't calculated properly (intentionally or otherwise).

And yet, it does measure something corresponding roughly to our idea of prosperity (which is what it's meant to measure).

It isn't coincidence that the countries we all recognize as poor have low GDP, while the countries we all recognize as rich have high GDP.

Or that during what we all recognize as bad times (e.g. the Great Depression) GDP falls, or vice versa.

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## Zippyjuan

> So the real GDP is less than reported since it includes borrowed monies , not very comforting .


It counts money spent.

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## timosman

> It counts money spent.


Which includes money "produced" times ...... 2?

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## acptulsa

> I am counting borrowing by saying borrowing does not count?  Confused.


He didn't say you did.  He said you concerned yourself where the money came from, yet didn't pay attention to where the money came from.

Then you repeated what he said as though you were correcting him.  And everything you've said since has been pure rank sophistry.

Borrowing adds to GDP as surely as debt is the thing the Fed makes into "money".  Get over it.

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## Zippyjuan

> Which includes money "produced" times ...... 2?


Money produced or borrowed or money earned is not part of the calculation.

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## timosman

> Money produced or borrowed or money earned is not part of the calculation.


Printing money does not increase spending/GDP?

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## Occam's Banana

> Money produced or borrowed or money earned is not part of the calculation.


And now Zippy is pretending not to understand transitive arithmetic ...

(What I don't understand is why he expects the rest of us to go along with that pretense.)

If _A = x1 + x2 + ... + xn_, and if _A + B + C = D_, then _x1_, _x2_, ..., _xn_ are all "part of" D, regardless that they are not explicitly referenced in the forumula _A + B + C = D_.

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