I wonder where the rest of the difference goes? Less efficient clothes and dish washing machines maybe?
didn't address the biggest reason people actually own cars, the personal freedom and enjoyment of operating them.
This isn't the biggest reason people actually own cars. People own cars because they need to get to work.
get back to being a government, not a sociology project.
What does this even mean? Isn't any government a sociology project?
we all see government waste every single day, why would anyone want to give them more money?
Waste is everywhere. In fact, Americans in general are the moste wasteful people in the world. Just look at their energy consumption and refuse production per capita. Just because government is wasteful doesn't mean that we should just abandon it completely. Many of our government services (protection, education, utilities, law enforcement...) we don't have a more efficient alternative for. Yes, you can privatize them, but only at the expense of losing control over them.
Also, private doesn't necessarily mean more efficient. Just look at the US's health care system. It is far less cost-efficient than the public systems of Europe.
Are Americans evolving to be more "Latin" since Latin birthrates in the US is higher than other ethnicities?
If you want to think of "American" as a sub-species, then yes, Americans are definitely becoming more Latin.
Indeed, the reason hedonic and imputed values are added to the GDP - together about $6 trillion - or a spare Japan - is to keep the debt/GDP near 100%.
Or maybe it's because (in the case of imputed) we need to quantify the value of someone owning their home and living in it. Consider that if everyone owned a home, but rented it to someone else (and rented a home for themselves with the proceeds) , you would have the exact same situation as if everyone just lived in their own home. Except that without imputed value the latter would contribute nothing to GDP, while the former would contribute massively.
To remove the (artificial) fluctuations from people switching from ownership to renting, we just calculate it as if everyone was renting.
In the end all that really matters is that you calculate GDP consistently from year to year - and including hedonic and imputed values makes our measurements more consistent. All that matters is the trend.
Of course, given that the US economy is in about as bad a shape as that of Greece (scaled by the population) and for similar reasons, you may be exactly right.
You can't be serious. Greece's debt to gdp ratio is 175% - the USA's is 100%. USA unemployment is 5.5%, Greece's unemployment is 26%. TWENTY SIX PERCENT.
The USA has some economic issues, sure, but comparing them to Greece is just idiotic. Extremely idiotic.
In Seoul, a whopping 96.5% of 19-year-old men are short-sighted.
Say what you want about fear-mongering, that's a pretty crazy statistic. Sounds like I should invest in some Korean laser correction company.
1. If I place seven orders a day, I alone have monopolized a driver and his vehicle for an entire work shift if the distribution center is 30 minutes away from me. That's the labor cost and vehicle cost for an entire day that my orders must pay for in "shipping".
Only if there are no other deliveries to be made anywhere near you.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. -- Jerome Klapka Jerome