[RobAtticus]

>I really want to see how the US being the richest is calculated.

I don't think it's really a mystery. When people say this, they are referring to the fact that the US has the largest GDP (total, not per capita) in the world. Of course there are pros/cons to this measure. That said, while your hypothetical is true, I'm not sure it's realistic for all the reasons you said; it wouldn't make any sense for the parties involved.

[bopbeepboop]

I didn’t know that — I knew it was a measure, but not necessarily that it’s the measure most people mean.

> I'm not sure it's realistic for all the reasons you said; it wouldn't make any sense for the parties involved.

I would argue that a major economic viewpoint is exactly this has happened — women entered the workforce to do jobs that replaced the role they traditionally did at home, which boosted GDP but crashed a bunch of untracked value.

I’ve had several economists explain that to me as the source of growing worker discontentment: they give more labor for less value delivered to them, but it makes the number bigger on the books. You say it doesn’t make sense for the parties involved, but that’s only true of the two families: the government gets extra tax revenue if the families make that exchange. People outside those families have an incentive to force them into that position because those people benefit from the families loss.

I think if you added a couple steps to my scenario (and some information fuzziness), you could see it happening in the real world.

I overly distilled the point to highlight the absurdity.

[Synaesthesia]

There's a lot wrong with the way GDP is measured. Economist Michael Hudson writes about this.

Nevertheless the US is a very wealthy country by any measure.