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gross domestic product
'Let Them Eat GDP Reports': 44 Million Americans Are Food Insecure
"By focusing mostly on economic statistics that benefit mostly the wealthy... the nation's political and media elites blithely overlook the hard evidence that the economy is still structurally unsound for large swaths of the public."
Apr 01, 2024
A U.S. anti-hunger group marked April Fools' Day on Monday with a snarky statement suggesting that hungry Americans "can eat positive economic statistics about the soaring stock market or the growing gross domestic product."
"Let them eat GDP reports," Hunger Free America declared of the 44 million Americans—including 13 million children—who live in food insecure households, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
GDP is the market value of all the finished goods and services produced in a country over a certain time period. Critics have long argued against using it as the premier indicator of how a nation is doing.
"The old school way of the elites fighting hunger was to say, 'let them eat cake,'" said Hunger Free America CEO Joel Berg. "But the more modern approach is to say, 'let them eat a report of the nation's growing GDP, although the report offers empty calories.'"
"By focusing mostly on economic statistics that benefit mostly the wealthy—like stock indexes—the nation's political and media elites blithely overlook that hard evidence that the economy is still structurally unsound for large swaths of the public, and then those same elites are flummoxed as to why the public tells pollsters they are still not satisfied with the economy," Berg explained.
"The country's impoverished multitudes can now get all they can eat—assuming they can digest paper report pages."
"But the good news is that, none of that matters now, because truckloads of positive economic reports are being shipped to food banks, soup kitchens, and food pantries nationwide, and the country's impoverished multitudes can now get all they can eat—assuming they can digest paper report pages and cardboard report covers, and don't mind a bit of poisonous ink," he quipped.
While inflation has eased in the United States over the past two years in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, corporations have engaged in price gouging that has kept costs high for Americans, everywhere from gas pumps to grocery stores to fast food restaurants.
"It's one thing for corporations to pass reasonable increased costs to consumers. It's another for them to line their coffers by exploiting Americans who are just trying to get by," the Groundwork Collaborative's Liz Pancotti said in January, as the group released a related report. "It's time to rein in corporate price gouging—or families will continue to pay the price."
Data released last month by the Federal Reserve shows that the top 1% of Americans are the richest they have ever been, with a collective $44.6 trillion in wealth, a record largely driven by the stock market. President Joe Biden and some progressive Democratic lawmakers recently renewed calls for wealth taxes, but such proposals are not expected to pass the divided Congress.
Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and has been so since 2009. Although state policymakers have taken action to raise pay for some or all workers, national legislation to boost wages also has not been able to get through Congress.
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'An Invasion... of Economic Growth': CBO Says Immigrants Will Boost US GDP, Tax Revenue
"So immigrants helped grow our economy? Sure doesn't fit the narrative that Republicans are selling," said Rep. Delia Ramirez.
Feb 07, 2024
As members of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday battled over a bipartisan security package containing "chaotic and cruel" border policies, a nonpartisan federal agency highlighted the economic benefits of immigration's impact on the labor force.
Based on 10-year projections, "the labor force in 2033 is larger by 5.2 million people, mostly because of higher net immigration," Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Phill Swagel said in a statement. "As a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise."
Those are some key takeaways from a new CBO report, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034.
Although, as The Washington Post's Jeff Stein pointed out, "it does not take into account any legislation that Congress may or may not approve," the immigration-related projection still caught the attention of several politicians and observers.
"Your yearly reminder that undocumented immigrants pay roughly $12 billion in taxes every year—and contribute far more than they receive in benefits!" declared Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found in 2017 that undocumented immigrants contribute an estimated $11.74 billion a year to state and local taxes. CNNreported last year that they contribute billions more to federal tax revenue by filing with individual taxpayer identification numbers.
The new CBO report notably contradicts a GOP talking point—as Republicans in Congress are suddenly killing a border package they have demanded for months, seemingly to benefit the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump.
As legal analyst and former prosecutor Eric Lisann said in response to the report, "To be clear the prevailing discourse when Republicans discuss immigration is that immigration is a significant net drain on the economy."
Democratic New York City Comptroller Brad Landerstressed that "immigration benefits our economy. Immigrant New Yorkers are more likely to be employed and more likely to create jobs by starting businesses. Instead of scapegoating, we need stronger management to help asylum-seekers file asylum applications and get work authorizations."
Democrats in Congress—particularly those who have blasted the GOP's immigration policy demands—were also quick to weigh in.
"Turns out immigrants arent' 'takers' after all—they're givers to the U.S. economy and essential to a sustainable future, especially if we want elder generations to age with dignity," said Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Fellow "Squad" member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali war refugee, suggested the CBO's report "is not helpful to all the fearmongers in the Senate and House. Clearly immigrants have and will always be an asset in our economy."
Sharing the findings on social media, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote, "This is for GOP folks screaming anti-immigrant lies about immigrants draining our economy as well as Dems who should defend immigrants and push for humane immigration reforms rather than GOP enforcement-only strategies: Immigrants strengthen our economy, communities, and country."
U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) also urged her colleagues to circulate the information, saying: "So immigrants helped grow our economy? Sure doesn't fit the narrative that Republicans are selling. Democrats need to start standing on these facts instead of negotiating with extremists who are scapegoating our immigrant communities."
In the upper chamber on Wednesday, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was one of few progressive members who opposed the package—and he made clear his opposition to the border policies also widely decried by rights groups nationwide.
Padilla also noted the CBO report, saying, "Your reminder that while Republicans are hell-bent on villainizing immigrants, immigration is BOOSTING our economy."
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Watch New Zealand MP's 'Absolutely Brilliant' 80-Second Takedown of GDP
"The squiggly line of GDP can go up but we also know full well that so too can homelessness; so too can the desecration of the environmental fundamentals that are necessary for life as we know it," she said.
Jan 12, 2024
A few weeks after Chlöe Swarbrick posted an 80-second video on Instagram, the Green Party member of the New Zealand Parliament was still winning praise on Friday for her brief and powerful takedown of gross domestic product.
"Watch Aotearoa New Zealand MP Chlöe Swarbrick deliver the most formidably cogent summary of the 20th-century economic order—and how it ruined everything," said U.K.-based journalist Dave Vetter, sharing the clip on X, formerly Twitter. "I genuinely don't think I've seen—or read—a more concise and effective summary than this."
"Even today, 'Greens' are portrayed by our media as pie-in-the-sky dreamers, while the besuited worshipers of an ideology wholly divorced from the observable universe are regarded as pragmatic geniuses," he added. "It's what you might call total reality inversion."
"We don't live in a game of Monopoly," Swarbrick said in her mid-December remarks to Parliament about an economic bill. She referenced environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken's 2009 declaration that "we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product."
Swarbrick also summarized the development of the modern concept of GDP—a measure of the value of goods and services produced in a country during a certain time period—for a U.S. congressional report nearly a century ago.
She then said, "That baseline measure of just those transactions does not give us any meaningful insight into the value of those transactions, whether we actually want them in the first place, whether they actually benefit people and the planet, nor the distribution of those transactions—that is, who benefits from those transactions."
"The squiggly line of GDP can go up but we also know full well that so too can homelessness; so too can the desecration of the environmental fundamentals that are necessary for life as we know it," she continued, arguing that "we can do this economy thing a lot better."
When Swarbrick took office in 2017, at age 23, she was the youngest MP to enter Parliament in 42 years. Her use of the term "OK, Boomer" to call out a heckler while she was speaking about climate legislation in 2019 informed the title of a short film about her career, OK Chlöe.
In addition to the climate emergency, her legislative priorities have included cannabis decriminalization, election access, mental health services, and a wealth tax. Swarbrick said in June that "wealth in Aotearoa is concentrated in the back pockets of a wealthy few. It's time we get on and fix this."
While New Zealand's Greens favor a wealth tax, Labour has been divided. October elections in the country marked the end of the Labour's leadership and, after weeks of negotiations, the right-wing National Party reached an agreement with ACT New Zealand and New Zealand First to form a government. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his party do not support a wealth tax.
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