Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ArtTimeInvestor 128 days ago

     "...the slowing GDP growth rate in America..."
What are they talking about?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

2 comments

Click the "Edit Graph" button, and change the unit to "Change from Year Ago, Billions of Dollars" to see the evidence.
I don't see anything that looks like a "slowing" in mid 2018.

Q1, Q2 and Q3 2018 are all higher than anything that came before.

He said “slowing growth rate” not “shrinking economy”. Take 1900 to 2025 (or 2019 if you want to dodge covid) and EMA the (g’-g)/g and it will be visually apparent.

Quite hard to see higher derivatives or rates in the g vs. t graph. You need to plot at least dg/dt vs t to see. But definitely need dg/g vs t to see.

Haven’t looked at the true data (though it would be unsurprising) but your graph on its own hard to spot plus explanation makes no sense.

100,200,300,400,500

100%,50%,33%,25%

Increasing g, decreasing dg/g

I don't see the contradiction?
I don't see anything that looks like a "slowing" in mid 2018.

Growth in Q1, Q2 and Q3 2018 was higher than anything that came before.

Slowing refers to a change in the derivative, in this context. Slowing growth would be a decrease in change in GDP per year — a decrease in growth. But the claim is that the growth (first derivative) is what’s slowing — that is, the second derivative of GDP w.r.t. time went negative, which does seem to be the case in mid 2018 from the linked chart.