Comments on: Consumer Spending is Not 70% of the Economy

By: American retail workers need more than $10 an hour | Worldwide News Home

American retail workers need more than $10 an hour | Worldwide News Home — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:23:46 +0000

[…] spending is over 60% of the American economy. More of that money needs to make its way down to the people ringing up all those […]

By: American retail workers need more than $10 an hour | ForexWorldBlog

American retail workers need more than $10 an hour | ForexWorldBlog — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:13:37 +0000

[…] spending is over 60% of the American economy. More of that money needs to make its way down to the people ringing up all those […]

By: Martin Luz: Earth to Fed: You Can’t Lose 40% of Something You Don’t Have | Blog

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 04:04:13 +0000

[...] had a problem: An economy that’s about 60% reliant on consumer spending (about 50% if you exclude healthcare) can’t afford to let consumer spending slow at the same [...]

By: Rakesh Kaul

Rakesh Kaul — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 23:33:40 +0000

Don

Out of the 60% spending how much do you attribute to consumer finance as a share of our economy? Thank you

Rakesh

By: Quora

Quora — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:45:16 +0000

How much of the U.S. economy is directly attributable to consumer spending?…

Based on this post: http://dmarron.com/2010/05/27/consumer-spending-is-not-70-of-the-economy/ Journalists, commentators, and economists often say that consumer spending makes up 70% of the U.S. economy. Indeed, it’s easy to find several examples of tha…

By: Douglas Lee

Douglas Lee — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:17:31 +0000

I agree consumers pay, but not as directly as you suggest. Most of the insurance money comes from two sources — tax dollars and company payments. Remember a big part of insurance is Medicare and Medicaid paid for very indirectly by consumer tax money. Much of the remainder is company paid health insurance. This is a payment made instead of paying wages. Consumers pay, but not by paying insurance premiums directly.

By: Consumer Spending is 60% of the Economy, not 70% « Donald Marron

Consumer Spending is 60% of the Economy, not 70% « Donald Marron — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 02:55:25 +0000

[...] As I noted in May, the monthly release of GDP data is inevitably followed by commentators claiming that “consumer spending makes up 70% of the U.S. economy” (see, for example, here). Unfortunately, that isn’t right. Consumer spending appears to be about 70% of the economy based on a seemingly obvious calculation (consumer spending divided by GDP), but that ignores the way that macroeconomic accounting handles imports. For reasons detailed in my earlier post, careful analysis suggests that the actual ratio is about 60%. [...]

By: Ellie

Ellie — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:39:09 +0000

Here is the British plan to wipe off their debt in one night as presented by the Cobden Center:

The plan starts with the government printing approx £850 billion in cash and injecting it directly into the vaults of the banks and into the checking accounts of individuals.

Wipe from the bank books all the demand-deposits/IOUs as banks would not owe you money anymore.
The banks don’t have to pay you anymore; they will suddenly be £850 billion better off.

The government can now get the money that the banks don’t have to pay back to the people and put it into Mutuals, which would then immediately pay off the national debt.

They say it is not even inflationary!

By: spencer

spencer — Sat, 29 May 2010 12:08:14 +0000

Douglas Lee — where do the insurance companies get the funds to pay for the health care?

For the dominant part they get it from the insurance payments that consumers provide to the insurance companies. Even if the consumers employer makes a large portion of the consumers insurance payments it is still compensation to the consumer. A small portion of the insurance payments come from the income on the investments the insurance companies make on the fees they first receive from consumers and hold for a period of time until they have to pay the money out to settle insurance claims.

Insurance companies are just intermediaries and consumers are still paying for health care, just indirectly.

By: No, It’s Not 70% of Economic Activity « Mandel on Innovation and Growth

Sat, 29 May 2010 00:47:28 +0000

[...] I’m getting some traction in my fight against the 70 percent meme. See Donald Marron’s post, for example. Tagged with: Consumer spending, Rethinking economic [...]