Troubling explainer on how the US economy lost 33% of its value

I did watch it, at least to the point where he had stated three incorrect and mutually inconsistent descriptions of the statistic. If six minutes into a 19 minute video he is still spewing garbage, I don’t feel it is my duty to continue to watch.

You’ve got no obligation to watch it, you’ve got no obligation to agree with it or to think it’s worth watching. All I said is it seems weird to just make up something they might have gotten wrong and just assume they didn’t specifically address it in the part of the video you didn’t watch.

Like, I might say, “These idiots don’t even know that oysters are alive.” I have no reason to think they don’t. Then someone links me the part 12 minutes into the video where they say, “Just to be clear, oysters are alive” and I’m like, “I had no obligation to watch it.” Not exactly the point, to my mind.

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For what is it worth, reporting annualized numbers is fairly standard. You need some kind of standard time-interval after all. Otherwise percentage changes, like absolute changes, are incomparable.

As for the next few quarters, who knows? There are ripple effects to consider, and congress can’t agree on an extension to the stimulus.

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The title of the video is “How the U.S. Economy Just Lost 33% of its Value”.

It didn’t.

The narrator says at 0:33 that “The report noted a 32.9% contraction in annual GDP growth in the months of April, May, and June.”

It didn’t say that. Also, a contraction in a growth rate is a totally different and less significant thing than a contraction.

During the breakdown of where the drops occurred, starting at about 4 minutes in, the narrator says things like “the consumption of X fell by Y%”. (e.g. consumption of services fell by 49%).

It didn’t.

After watching a quarter of the video and finding that it got three things wrong and nothing substantial right, I thought it reasonable to assume that the rest would be the same.

If the first quarter of a documentary on oysters says that they are rocks manufactured by aliens, then I feel justified in saying that it is wrong without watching the rest, even if there is a part later that says ‘only aliens know the secret to making living rocks–these aliens are called mollusks.’

Good news for the 22 million now unemployed Americans. Thank the Goddess it is not 33% of the GDP. Phew!

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If you don’t want to watch the video because of the clickbait title, that’s your business. But…

…is just BS. For example…

…is correct. Whether in your opinion it’s significant is your business. But analogizing it to…

…is totally divorced from reality and misleading on your part which is an odd response from someone who took issue with the factually incorrect clickbait title.

No one said or suggested it was. :roll_eyes:

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If it’s 33% down, then we have to subtract

R = 1 − (1 − 0.33)¼ = 9.5%

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You are correct. Thank you! I was in a rush, got sloppy, and missed that. I’d read it was 9.5%, but my quick math said 7.4%. Rather than sort things out right, I went with my bad math.

That means my other (sloppy) example is wrong too. A 1% decline per day would be 97.4% for the year.

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You are right that they said “growth” when they shouldn’t have. It wasn’t a change in growth it was a change in GDP. Of course everything else from the name of the video to the rest of what is said makes it fairly clear that this is just the video maker misspeaking. If you thought that’s what they actually meant then I can see how the video is confusing and contradictory. I find that a little uncharitable, but you are certainly right that those are the words used in the video.

My complaint was that you said that the GDP did not drop by 33%, it dropped by 9.5%, said that the makers of the video didn’t understand that. I pointed out that the makers of the video did understand that and explained it clearly (apparently about 10 seconds after you stopped watching) and now we’re arguing over whether you were right to believe that factually false thing. And having realized that’s what we’re doing, I think I’m going to bow out.

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