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Hookers And Blow: How Changing The Definition Of GDP Officially Jumped The Shark
A year ago it was the US which first "boosted" America's GDP by $500 billion - literally out of thin air - when it arbitrarily decided to include "intangibles" to the components that 'make up' GDP (in the process cutting over 5% from the US Debt/GDP ratio). Then Spain joined the fray. Then Greece. Then the UK. Then Nigeria, which showed those deveoped Keynesian basket cases how it is really done, when it doubled the size of its GDP overnight when it decided to change the base year of its GDP calculations. Now it is Italy's turn, and like everything else Italy does, this latest "revision" of the definition of GDP easily wins in the style points category. As Bloomberg reports, "Italy will include prostitution and illegal drug sales in the gross domestic product calculation this year." Yup: blow and hookers. And that, ladies and gents, how it's done.
Alas for Keynesian economists everywhere, since this "adjustment" largely shows that what one includes in GDP is now absolutely meaningless and for lack of a better word, a joke, it also means that the core concept of economic growth measurement has now officially jumped the shark.
But at least one will get a laugh out of the Italian GDP line items for hookers and blow. Bloomberg has the full story:
Drugs, prostitution and smuggling will be part of GDP as of 2014 and prior-year figures will be adjusted to reflect the change in methodology, the Istat national statistics office said today. The revision was made to comply with European Union rules, it said.
Renzi, 39, is committed to narrowing Italy’s deficit to 2.6 percent of GDP this year, a task that’s easier if output is boosted by portions of the underground economy that previously went uncounted. Four recessions in the last 13 years left Italy’s GDP at 1.56 trillion euros ($2.13 trillion) last year, 2 percent lower than in 2001 after adjusting for inflation.
The punchline:
“Even if the impact is hard to quantify, it’s obvious it will have a positive impact on GDP,” said Giuseppe Di Taranto, economist and professor of financial history at Rome’s Luiss University. “Therefore Renzi will have a greater margin this year to spend” without breaching the deficit limit, he said.
And that's what it is all about: literally making numbers up allowing the government to spend even more money it doesn't have on ridiculous political schemes, kickbacks, crony deals and corruption, and then when the people start to riot, blaming it all on "austerity."
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If the IRS can prosecute criminals for not reporting their ill gotten gains (new category of income?) as income, then it is necessarily part of GDP.
Craig
Does the city of Las Vagas's GDP include legalized prostitution in their figures? Of course they do. Aside from moral/religious issues if I pay a cute girl money that she might need for rent for services why wouldn't that be included?
funny, I agree with you that Italy is a special case, particularly because it's submerged economy is so huge
though it's not "all organized crime". plenty of private & personal tax dodging
nevertheless, GDP is supposed to give a hint about how taxable the economy is (and so how much debt it can bear)
hookers are taxed (badly), in Italy (prostitution is legal). drugs and all the rest... not so
on the other side, eventually all is consumed, and there you have very high VAT (value added taxes) in Italy, so all in all PM Renzi is just adapting Italy to the madness of the current GDP financial world consensus
btw: Prime Minister Renzi of the Italian Republic? "unelected"
check it out, he won internal party elections. and then got the majority in Parliament for a cabinet. as per Italian Constitution. but for some reason... the world press and blogosphere does not cry "unelected! unelected!"
Who says hypocrisy can't be funny.
I would bet that even Orwell couldn't have envisioned this non-sense.
Two of the biggest items in my budget. No not really but I'm not a Wall Street trader or a politician.
Here is my punchline: I just told a family member about this story and I was laughed at. "That is a lie,it is impossible".
Sheeple sheeple sheeple.
o_O
bullish. all the unemployed can be hired to collect the data.
I disagree with the notion that GDP calcs should exclude hookers and blow or their inclusion in GDP is a farce.
Both are real sources of economic activity. Their lack of legal status doesn't change that fact.
Italy's move does, however, highlight the limits of (lazily) using debt / GDP ratios to glean insight into a country's solvency. The ratio is at best directionally useful.
Tax receipts / debt is better, and since hookers and drug dealers typically don't pay taxes, the ratio is less prone to manipulation.
GDP = Govt Doesn't Produce
GDP = Genuinely Deceived Public
Is this a whitehouse.com /backpage/escort.com link to drive traffic to obamacare sign-up?
Cum fuck me, I have free Government condoms and the day after pill.
"Today's disappointing GDP numbers were based on lower consumption of all forms of cocaine: powder, free base and crack. Prostitution was also down ('down'? really?!). Paul Krugman blamed the weather, and other experts agree."
Reuters, November 2015
Does this mean I can write off the money I spend on hookers as a business expense now?
Just remember to keep your receipts.
if you hire them as consoltants
with proper paper trail ..
If hookers drop out of their pimp ring and can't fuck, does that decrease the labor participation rate?
Probably, but until then the labor participation rate is going up.
new hooker sales pitch
get it up
it's good for the economy...
So Silvio Berlusconi will responsible for the majority of GDP increase this year?
Western Europe is getting more decadent by the day..
He is a visionary
decadent? I find it moar decadent to make prostitution illegal. then... it does not work
Berlusconi does no drugs, btw. except testosterone, that is
Hey! I purchased a lot of Real Estate playing Monopoly!!!! That should count as GDP, shouldn't it?
Craig
You better stop giving the government new ideas on this.
I won't be surprised one bit if the US government adopts your idea in calculating the GDP sometime down the road.
After all, is there any other country on the planet that has drafted laws to classify pizza as vegetable if there is some (2 tbsp) tomato paste on it?
Only if hookers and blow was included somewhere along Boardwalk Place
A woman was in court over a rape allegation. The judge asked her when she was raped. The woman answered "Monday." The judge then asked her why it took her three days to go to the police. The woman answered, "because that is when the check bounced."
I think that just about sums up how ridiculous the calculation of GDP has become. I mean, why even include soft drinks, cigarettes, and the like?
Joke: What did the leper say to the prostitute?
"Keep the tip."
Why do Jewish guys watch their pornos backwards?
They like to see the women give the money back.
Fucking awesome! Forza Italia.
I visit Italy a couple times a year. I for one am prepared to help this struggling second world economy. Whose with me?
Let's all snort a nice fat racing stripe and bang a Vegas hooker in the name of economic growth!
Yes, for God, country and GDP.
Naughty girls are fabulous!! Blow? Makes me to anxious..well that, and the speed dick it gives me rules out ho's whilst jacked up on it.
It is a sign of the times that I presumed this story was true, rather than a satirical hoax.
News that should be satirical hoaxes are more and more appearing as real events! Therefore, I think satire needs to be noted as being satire, because the real world is becoming such an extremely Bizarro Mirror World, that one can no longer judge from the sheer absurdity of a news story that it can not possibly have been true.
An article like the one above should be false. However, I initially presumed it was true, because I have gradually adapted to change my level of assessing preposterous absurdities to be lower and lower, in order to adjust to what the real world appears to actually be doing! My macabre sense of humour has worn out from overuse, and I no longer can tell at face value whether a story is satire or real, because real stories are now so often utterly absurd that there is barely any way left to judge the difference! My ability to tell whether something is intended to be satirical has eroded, due to the deluge of real news absurdities washing it away.
We're approaching the point where The Onion will be put out of business because their stories are indistinguishable from the actual news.
And Alex Jones doesn't seem like such a nutjob.
Even David Icke no longer appears like such a nutjob!
http://www.repubblica.it/economia/2014/05/22/news/istat_da_2014_droga_e_prostituzione_in_calcolo_pil-86847923/?ref=search
"ISTAT: Drugs and prostitution on GDP statistics"
No further comments.
In CA those are number 1 & 2 growth industries by a long shot, we have more strip mall pot shops and massage parlors than Starbucks or lawyers
Mom im home, whatta do ya dink. She is awsome.
I find these pictures offensive and tasteless! The Hookers have too many clothes on for my tastes! The photographer should be fired, how did they not notice the bottle was in the wrong location???
My GDP gets a rise from those babes.
Inflation number are low despite the prices of everything I consume is going up.
Constantly lied to by the US government about wars and surveillance.
Fake tits, collagen lips, and botox.
What is in the world is real anymore?
Now, including the black market economy into GDP numbers? WTF
So drug dealers, prostitutes, and organize crime are just gonna turn in their ledgers to include the numbers into GDP?
They missed trafficking of children.
Ultimate Capitalism at its best (beast)!
However, we have to give some credit to the italians.
At least they don't bomb down main towers or the Collosseum in order to hide Pentagon's $2,3 trillions missing and... Else.
I understand the economy needed stimulus, but literally?
You guys are all off base on this one.
Hookers and drug dealers buy houses and cars, go to Walmart and have mobile phones.
They buy goods and services, pay bills, have families and real estate and automobiles.
That's GDP.
...or are you now going to argue that all black/underground economic activity is never to be counted? So all those "Entertainment Specialists" and their houses and cars in Vegas are not to be counted?
Do they count EBT in GDP? What about theft? After cleaning up at the scrap metal place from stolen copper wire I usually hit up Walmart for more mulch.
Sounds like you are more productive than most of us....
What about armed robberies, burlgaries, and drug trafficking? The same arguments would apply to robbers, burglars, and drug traffickers. Right? In fact, these guys probably buy bigger houses than hookers.
Moreover, the amount of money involved in these activities tend to be more accurately assessed and documented than income from prostitution. Yes?
I wonder what some "privileged" members of the military and the CIA will have to say about providing income stats for purposes of calculating the GDP. They have a duty to disclose such information, right?
That will be phased in next year. Crime fighting will be then marked as being 'bad for the economy'.
You sound so Krugmanesque. Your error is simply accepting governmental lies regarding the definition of GDP. Like Krugman and other assorted microcephallics, to consider money spent as the reflection of national fiscal and economic health is criminally naive. The true measure of a nation's wealth is manufacturing and capital accrual. Spending is redistributing the symbol for labor and production. According to your logic, the seizure of income known as taxation should also be properly be a net contribution to GDP since it is all spent. Thus, theft=production. Reductio ad absurdum.
What he said....
You guys have a bias against counting what hookers save, don't know why. That house she bought and the workers she paid to build it don't count but your income does. Got it.
You seem to think that no drug dealers or hookers or black marketers ever accrued any capital. That's bias, fellas.
Haven't you ever seen your Real Estate agent's house and car? Where do you *think* those girls got the start-up capital?
How do you *think* they are able to stop working at 30 and sit on a beach?
Where do you *think* that Valeria Lukyanova gets her money for all of the procedures and surgery?
Where do you *think* Joe Kennedy's money came from?
You are all slipping. Step it up, boys.
What's the triple leveraged ETF that tracks the Hookers-n-Blow segment of the economy?
HOBLO3X
I see that it is triple leveraged.
"Hookers & blow"......Got one, you automatically get the other!
In the ongoing effort to make the political class look good, the economic/jester profession stoops to endless lows.
Italian men are encouraged to fuck for the fatherland. According to demographic figures they are not doing it enough to create offspring so they they are now encouraged to do it at least for the economy.
Long Viagra, long condoms. We live in a strange world. I guess the underworld is now so confident that they are going mainstream and becoming part of the 'normal' economy.
As Napper said above: what about armed robberies, burglaries, etc.? Fighting crime will be banned because it is bad for the economy.
And here is an idea: how about people trafficking from Africa to Europe and sinks their boats half way through? Plenty of volunteers at the African shore waiting to make their contribution to GDP.
You know, I think you've got it backwards. The kind of fucking that it takes to raise birth rates isn't what typically goes on with prostitutes, who typically use birth control of one form or another. The big factors in birth rate decline tend to be education (women with job prospects outside the kitchen tend to pursue them) and the labor market (young people who have no prospects are afraid of getting married and having children). Looking at maps of where prostitution is legal and where it isn't, I doubt prostitution has a correlation, either positive or negative, to birth rate.
I didn't say that they were fucking prostitutes in order to have children unless they consider their wives to be prostitutes. True, many young Italians don't even have a wife but live home with mommy. But the GDP needs to stay high so hence the encouragement to at least fuck the prostitutes. All in sarcasm of course. Much prostitution is forced prostitution by human traffickers. If women want to do it voluntarily because it is money faster earned than sitting behind the cash register of the local Wallmart than that is fine. It is another thing if some poor girl from Moldova was lured with promises of a better life but ended up having to have sex with creeps.
I just farted and added $10 to the GDP!!!
Why not? It's the GROSS Domestic Product, isn't it?
Like gross penis size vs. net penis size?
there is a shit on my floor!
or is the floor on the shit, as kierkegaard would say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jSIc3YPRw8&feature=kp
Funny how zh loses it's direlict and getss sued off its ass.
Once "Hooked, you are "Blown" to bits.
cocaine - the real economic stimulant
cocaine - the real economic stimulant
Of course it has to be included into GDP. Its going to be included also in Germany starting next year, besides illegal cigarette sales and other important illegal services.
Lots of new borthels were build for international clients. In North Germany the Swedes are very important clients nowadays since the legal situation in Sweden is that a client visiting a prostitute (paying for sex)) is committing a crime. If he is caught several times he might even go to prison.
In the Western part of Germany its also booming. Neighbouring France introduced a similar legislation. Not that strict as in Sweden but close to it.
In the South, the Italians are the best clients, there a regular weekend bus trips from North Italy available to stay a weekend in a luxury red house. Often everything "all inclusive". But also a flatrate covering all night and all whores seems to be a common practice according to the news. Cheap airline fares do attract many young men from all over Europe most often in groups sometimes organized as bachelors party.
The whores do come from all over the world but nowadays by the most from Romania/Bulgaria area which are full member of the EU, so there are no restrictions fo them to come to Germany. The temptation to work in a brothel in Germany is immense because a whore can earn easily 100 Euros a night (of course often more) while 100 Euros is more than an average month salary in Romania (if you have a job available).
It makes no sense to drive this giant industry into the illlegality becaue it would attract only crime. As it is now organized in Germany this business branch pays a lot of taxes and provides lots of jobs.
Besides that of course there is lots of prostitution which is not registered. But the tax collectors are ingenious. A lately introduced system in a smaller South Germany middle size town is targeting the street whores. Each whore has to buy each night a "ticket" at an automat (like a parking ticket) for the street where she is working. And the police is only controlling if each whore has paid her ticket. The ticket cost I believe 20 Euros per night. The City council introduced this system becaue they argued, that they have a lot of work (to clean the places regularly) and a lot of trouble for the police sometimes. So this 20 Euros do cover only the costs. The system is fully accepted by the whores too because now police is more regularly patrolling thus there is more security for the them.
So all in all it would be madness not to introduce prostitution into GDP. It is estimated that daily appx 1.2 million male clients pay for sexual services in Germany. But its a growing industry as the huge investments into luxury brothels do show.
We should add campaign contributions and other political graft to our GDP as well as hookers and blow.
Moar Hookers and Blow, lets call it the DSK GDP turbo booster .... sucking ( and snorting ) up the slack like a hoover deluxe.
Does this mean I can deduct my hooker and blow spend as an opex as long as one of my customers or vendors partakes as well? Is there a greater write off if my blow is produced using sustainable practices and my hookers are from an underrepsented minority? I think I can work with this.
GDP=GDB
A lot of us are suckers for articles that sport the pictures of women showing a lot of skin. Still this is not the kind of growth that makes a country or economy strong. Not all economic growth is created equal. If you spend money but afterwards have little to show for it, you have wasted it.
Sadly much of the money America "invest it itself" each year through government spending and programs falls into this category. We need the right kind of economic growth, growth that is sustainable, with a purpose, well directed, and that has long lasting benefits. More on this subject in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-wrong-kind-of-growth.html
holy SHIT.
There's an article?
I just clicked on boobies.
GDP includes every (!) business, even this you cannot believe.
Overall in the world.
South American countries need to follow suit and their export totals will soar!!!
So I can tweak my model, should I count hookin' as transportation (one is, after all, going for a ride), and also, would this be considered manufacturing sector or service sector? Or does that depend on whether a child is conceived?!?
As a former escort driver I can assure you the transportation is a seperately paid-for item, usually by the girl herself.
the gubmint cant even run a profitable whorehouse (mustang ranch nv.) so the ussa can now add in the $35 billion drug trade, and will have to have a committee and outside consultants to calculate the addon for Lincoln tunnel transvestite hookers, glory hole specialists, political graft, mafia activities and the PLA cash contributions to the Clintoons.... the daily take at bingo and religious collecitons... WOW the economy is booming... I will definitely order my Tuatara today https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xtcRk9J1ZHg
So now in Italy drug smugglers, pushers and whores are entrepreneurs and patriotic Italians. But how can you not include bank robbers, burglars, car theives, and corrupt politicians taking bribes? Doesn't seem fair.
Italians... The first solution they think up for any problem is ... H00k3rz And Bl0\/\/...
* H00k3rz and Bl0\/\/* Keynes his last stand?
Are you telling me that my contribution to society counts? Hey, I'm a doer!...
the actions are, prima fascie, desperately insane.
the increase in GPD would be meaningful only if they went back to the start of the data series, or even say, 1946 (end of war, start of new economy) and added in hookers and blow for every year since.
which would then not matter, as the total percentages would not change and there would be no increase shown. I am betting that would be the case, since hookers and blow are a "luxury" item ....generally speaking. and in a declining economy, would also show a decline in purchase of same. there is only so much money in the budget. and I cannot speak to the degree of elasticity of demand for hookers and blow. yes, high demand, but how sensitive to other demands for the same money. dare I say, how sticky?
otherwise, as the article and comments indicate, just throw in any made up number at any time you feel like it that gives you the desired results. truly desperate measures. that in the end, mean nothing.
Tyler, we need more hooker pictures - the less clad the better - boosts morale.
Laughing at myself...before I opened the link, I was going to post how bout some moar nekin pictures.
And with that simple maneuver, the power-center of the entire EU just shifted from Brussels to Amsterdam. Go, baby go.
I think it's only fair. If dildo manufacturing is counted as part of GDP - and it is - then those lovely ladies who are most likely to wield them on unsuspecting (or begging for it) Asian tourists should have their labor that's used to employ said dildos be counted (not cunted) as part of the economy.
QED.
At least fraud and corruption feeds a few hungry sex workers and drug workers.
Can this world get any more insane? Somebody, anybody,please stop the world, I want to get off.
If Wall Street tabulated the hookers & blow there as GDP it would potentially exceed GDP for the planet as it's currently calculated. BULL-STEAM AHEAD! Get your Dow 30k hats ready
Congrats ZH, you made a headline in an automated Marxist online newsrag! At least it's not as fake as modern currency! http://paper.li/Ammar_Aziz/1308444398?edition_id=2c0e95d0-e2dd-11e3-85d0...