Consumer Spending

Americans. We love stuff. We buy so many things that it’s hard to comprehend mathematically. Roughly 70% to 75% of the $20 trillion U.S. economy is ordinary Americans just...buying things.

Yes, we buy things we need… like cars, and clothing, and food. But we also buy table-top fountains, sandwich presses, waffle makers, scented trash bags, pre-portioned produce, and save-the-date cards.

Add it all up. All that gluttony. All that impulse. All that sheer inability to let money sit in a stock market account and grow, and you get a national economic category called consumer spending.

We don’t have a problem with people buying everything and anything they want. But seriously…do we really need all this decorative soap?

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What are Gross Domestic Product...8 Views

00:00

Finance Allah Shmoop What are gross domestic product GDP and

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gross national product GNP So how do you know how

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great your country is Well you can measure how many

00:16

missiles you have or you can count the number of

00:18

Olympic gold medals You've one or you can count the

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number of Starbucks locations you have all over your country

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for you can measure the strength of your economy Well

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how do you do that Economists used to main measures

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One is called gross domestic product called gross national product

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Gross domestic product might sound like what happens when you

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flush a baby alligator down the toilet And three years

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later it crawls back out looking for its mommy But

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in actuality it represents the total value of all the

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stuff you make in your country along with all the

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services you provide You know like legal services and dental

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cleaning services and stuff like that And you know that's

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provided by your citizens There You live on the sovereign

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island nation of squish squad Scary Located just offshore of

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Norway you are one of twelve inhabitants and all of

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you fish for herring all day Each of you catch

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an average of ten pounds of herring every day Hearing

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sells for about ten bucks a pound and everyone works

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two hundred days a year so multiply that all up

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and you get twelve People work in two hundred days

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a year each each catching ten pounds each day with

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each pound selling for ten bucks And well you could

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say the GDP of squish squad Scary is two hundred

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forty thousand dollars That's the value of all the stuff

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you're country made in a year Meanwhile elsewhere in the

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world the numbers get a bit higher For instance the

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GDP of the U S was about nineteen trillion dollars

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in two thousand seventeen so Well yeah that's a little

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bit more But of course the U S has three

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hundred twenty five million ish people in it instead of

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the twelve squid squid aeons And its GDP includes things

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like airplane manufacturing and high value financial transactions And you

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know shmoop subscription sales instead of just herring fishing So

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it makes sense that the U S economy would be

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much much bigger toe Look at how an economy is

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doing People usually watch how it changes over time say

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one of your fellow squish Quaid Ian's starts fishing with

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dynamite Well it's a new technique Output goes from ten

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point today to twelve next year With the new output

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your GDP goes two hundred eighty eight thousand from the

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two forty and change before That's twenty percent GDP growth

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in a year We'll guess what big complex economies like

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the US pretty much never see growth rates like that

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Economists usually consider it a healthy growth rate to be

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more like two or three percent in a given year

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Smaller countries and developing countries can have bigger growth rates

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Right Like take China It's a big country biggest population

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in the world with no more than a billion and

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a half people But it's still racks up relatively high

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GDP growth rates because of the rapid expansion of its

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manufacturing base Right they optimize their farmers and take them

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from growing turn ups and instead have them assemble semiconductors

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and stuff like that way higher margin to sell a

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semiconductor than a turnip As recently as two thousand ten

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China put up annual GDP growth rates still in the

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double digits like ten percent and hit double digits and

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change for five consecutive years in the early two thousand

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Well GDP doesn't always go up in nations around the

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world The year after discovering dynamite fishing swish squad Ian's

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suffered a Siri's of significant storms The number of work

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days went down from two hundred to one ninety Everything

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else stayed the same self In that year GDP fell

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to two hundred seventy three thousand and change from the

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two eighty eight It was the year before decline of

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five percent Well he kind of is called that decline

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a contraction if a contraction happens for two or more

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quarters in a row so like two three months periods

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in a row the country is considered to be in

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a recession If the contractions air deep enough and last

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long enough well then that's called the depression like it

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goes on for a year Two years or three years

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Both GDP and GNP measure the economic output of a

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country but they used different definitions about what all that

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entails Gross domestic product consists of all the products and

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services made it given your inside the country So you

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know made within the borders of the country made domestically

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gross national product measures the stuff made by people or

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companies from a country regardless of where it was actually

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made like you're an American citizen No building pots or

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pottery in Mexico We found that in the GNP number

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so GDP tracks where it was made GNP tracks Who

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made it So if an American it's a toilet cozy

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while sitting in his living room in Des Moines that

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gets included in both GDP and GNP However if an

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American goes on vacation Teo Cameroon and it's a toilet

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cozy in his hotel room there well that's included in

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GNP but not in GDP was made by an American

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but not in America Well meanwhile if the American comes

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back home to Des Moines and a Scottish friend of

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his comes over and it's a toilet cozy for him

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that would count in GDP but not in GNP right

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The toilet cozy was made in the US but not

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by an American In the old days like before the

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nineteen nineties GNP was typically used to track national economic

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growth However with the dramatic rise of globalization around that

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time GDP became much easier to track Eventually it became

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the go to measure of growth to review Both GMP

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and GDP track national economic output They both look at

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the amount of goods and services produced by the country

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though they have different working definitions about what that means

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The size of GDP and GNP are impacted by the

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size of a country In the level of economic and

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technical sophistication Big complex economies like the US usually aspire

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to modest growth like two or three percent smaller Countries

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in developing economies can post much higher growth rates with

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percentages in the double digits Not being all that uncommon

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GDP measures the value of stuff produced within a country

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regardless of who makes it GNP measures the value of

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stuff made by citizens of a country regardless of where

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it's made So if a squish squatty and citizen were

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toe float a raft into Norwegian waters and catch some

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herring there While that would count on GNP on their

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books but not G Meanwhile if he invited a Norwegian

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friend over for a day of fishing for anything that

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Norwegian caught would count on the squish Wadi and GDP

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but not on the squish Claudia and G N P

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if the scratch Wadi Ins were to launch a surprise

06:20

attack on Norway However wealth and all bets would be 00:06:23.518 --> [endTime] off You just have to see who is

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