This is staggering. Also, not explicitly mentioned is that boomer healthcare should not really add to GDP because it is the cost of keeping a rapidly depreciating asset minimally functioning (like an old Chevette)... https://t.co/sRDC46Oois
— Dave Collum (@DavidBCollum) January 2, 2024
Why are GDP and job number jobs numbers defying slow-down predictions?
Easy.
Because most new jobs are disguised government spending. They don't create anything, of course, but they sure do spend and they are about to get a lot worse. A few days ago The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article on what they call the "Welfare Industrial Complex." They kick off asking, "What's driving America's job growth?" concluding it's government social assistance and associated healthcare. In fact, more than half, 56% of the 2.8 million net new jobs created last year, were precisely that--government social assistance and healthcare. In Blue states, like New York and Illinois, those welfare jobs make up literally more than all the job gains. So 113% in Michigan; the same in Illinois, and 121% in New York. In other words, their real productive economy is actually shrinking. Without those jobs from just the last year alone, nationwide we would be close to 5% unemployment; if you add back the millions of workers who dropped out during COVID, we'd be closer to 8% unemployment.
Now, welfare spending is GDP. To be sure, it will get Paul Krugman popping the bubbly but it is not economic growth; it's not making us richer. In fact, it's economic deconstruction, converting formerly productive people into the permanent wards of society. Indeed, if you go into poor areas in many of these states, you'll see literally nothing but welfare services, so nonprofits, Medicaid-paid health clinics, with a tiny sprinkling of gas stations, and takeout with bulletproof glass. So the productive economy is actually shrinking, but the GDP numbers hide it. All pretty dire but brace yourself because there's a lot more to come as literally millions of new welfare cases pour in wholesale from what was formerly known as the border.
The Wall Street Journal reports that New York City is currently spending $394 per day on every single migrant. That's the price of a nice Disney vacation. That comes to $144,000 per year per migrant, which is of course far more than Americans make with actual jobs, possibly more since I can only imagine the games government activists play to hide the money they spend. Add these imported millions to the hundreds of thousands of "drug-addled and mentally ill homeless living on the street," that is a quote from the WSJ, and you've got the makings for some very impressive consumer spending.
Those nosebleed trillions are just the start since decades of experience have shown that the more government spends on welfare, the more people go on welfare. In Joe Biden's first stimulus bill, for example, they poured out nearly $43 billion in housing subsidies to end homelessness as we know it.
So what happened?
Well, the homeless population shot up by 85,000. While homeless don't cost as much as migrants, they're just $86,000 a year again per person, which is also a very respectable salary anywhere in America; again, that's taking the activists who run government welfare at their word. As the WSJ notes, progressive government doesn't do anything on the cheap. Indeed they don't. Los Angeles is currently spending $837,000 per unit to build housing for the homeless. So at $144k a year per migrant and $86k per ruined life times millions, you get the makings of some fantastic consumer spending numbers even as the economy and the treasury are gutted.
