Talk:Economy of the United States

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Contents

[edit] Accumulated expansion requests

 Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (January 2007)
  • Add productivity statistics to infobox and article
  • Extend history section backward from WWI to include the 1800s, the Revolutionary era, and the colonial period.
  • Add Gini coefficient to infobox.
  • Change exchange rate table into a graph
  • Add information about the farming sector, including subsidies
  • Add more details about what types and quantities of products are imported and exported.
  • Add statistics about home prices (see real estate pricing)
  • Add Unemployment in the United States as a subarticle (pull info from Unemployment)
  • Show consolidated EU import/export statistics [1] [2]
  • Add information about important industries, including agriculture and aquiculture
  • Add information about energy and infrastructure
  • Add more about the great convergence periods of 1940 - 1970s —Preceding unsigned comment added by Machetero150 (talk • contribs) 05:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
  • cite sources that don't come from purely right wing economists i.e. the heritage foundation, to make this more objective I would suggest adding sources from Economic policy institute as well as the brookings institute —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adam1285 (talk • contribs) 22:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] success was a sign of God's favor

I've never heard any serious economists in the US argue this, this needs a citation.--Rotten 16:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I've removed this claim. -- Beland 22:08, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gross external debt

 The factual accuracy of this article is disputed.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. (March 2008)

"As of 2006, the gross external debt has nearly $9 trillion dollars or 64% of GDP."

There may be a problem with grammar as well as the data. According to [3], it has exceeded 10 trillion as of 30th June 2006. Or am I reading the data wrong ?

Gross External Debt Position, June 30, 2007 is $12,249,418,000,000.[4]

Annualised GDP as at June 30, 2007 is $13,768,800,000,000.[5]

Gross External Debt as percent of GDP = 12,249,418/13,768,800=88.96%

58.105.162.170 (talk) 10:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External Debt

In the section External Debt, it is not very clear that it is amount of the gross debt that is mentioned. And it is probably actually wrong to equate that with NIIP. It would be more interesting to have a value for the net debt. Unfortunately, I don't know a source for that information. Rune Kock 00:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I've now found the net value at http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/intinv/intinvnewsrelease.htm. So I've inserted that figure and modified the text a bit to stress that the old number is a gross value. Rune Kock 19:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Just looking through the report, as at December 31st, 2006, the Net position is -2,539,629,000,000 and the gross position is -16,294,619,000,000.

58.105.162.170 (talk) 10:22, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Public (gov) portion of economy

 The factual accuracy of this article is disputed.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. (March 2008)

Misleading & properly labeled stats. If a label meaning [all] government spending is used, it should include all levels. Only Federal spending is used in the calculation. I see that the source is the CIA Factbook, which lists "budget". That only refers to Federal spending. 68.180.38.41 20:56, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding latest updates section

The article will benefit with adding a new section on the latest developments and news that gives the latest statistics and news affecting US economy.

Saedirof (talk) 23:28, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Misleading Intro

That first paragraph either should be clarified or removed. It's misleading: The US still holds the title of World's largest economy, on a country basis. The EU may hold the title of world's biggest economy, but the EU is not a country (let alone Eurozone). 27 countries make up the EU, and 15 Eurozone. The US, on the other hand is one single unified country.--Zereshk (talk) 08:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, defining the topic by what it isn't seems like a strange way to start the article. Rnb (talk) 23:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Indeed it is a very strange introduction. In addition, the United States is still the largest economy in PPP (purchasing power parity) I believe. The Eurozone is the largest in terms of MER (market exchange rate), but that does not necessarily indicate that the Eurozone is the largest economy. Therefore, I agree with Zereshk that the first paragraph should be deleted. Dotter (talk) 23:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I strongly concur. 96.227.18.198 (talk) 21:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Ack, that was me - got signed out somehow. john k (talk) 21:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

A statement that the US economy has been the world's largest economy since 1870 is misleading; clearly the British Empire was a larger economic power until the beginning of the 20th century. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.0.56.223 (talk) 22:04, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to the person who looked into the comment above. I still think the citation is worng as it talks about "the most productive economy" being the US. Productivity (ie amount of goods generated per person) is different from SIZE of national economy. Please can someone find a reliable source that says that the NATIONAL economy of the US has been the largest (I imagine on a dollar basis) since the 1890s or remove this sentence all together. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.0.56.223 (talk) 21:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

This was just added back by PiCo. However, the EU is simply not a nation-state, and PiCo has provided no evidence to dispute this. The U.S. is thus the largest national economy, so I have put this back. Superm401 - Talk 13:28, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sectors

What the hell is with the "Sectors" section? It has a brief thing about agriculture, and then a section called "financial" which includes, without explanation, a table, and that is all - nothing about manufacturing, or retailing, or the public sector, or health care, or anything else. john k (talk) 21:19, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] image

The image of the dollar bill at the top is way too big, but when I go to edit it it claims to be only 250 pixels wide. I'm getting the full quality image too, not just a stretched one. What's up with that? JayKeaton (talk) 20:29, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Government intervention

I realize that this is so deeply ingrained in the perspective of American economists that it's almost pointless to say this, but: the phrase "government intervention" smacks of POV, implying that the normal state of affairs is for the economy to run along pell-mell, entirely unmanaged, and activity by the government is an intrusion on this beautiful, autochthonous state. A more realistic picture is that an anarchist economy has never, in fact, existed, and for about as long as human history has allowed something we might call an "economy", states have been instrumental in directing the economic course. A better phraseology might be "role of government". Graft | talk 18:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Math in the intro doesn't add up

The intro says (1) the GDP of the US in 2007 was 13.8 trillion USD; (2) the external debt of the US in 2007 was 12 trillion USD; and (3) gross public debt (national debt) of the US in 2007 was 37% of GDP. The article on external debt confirms my understanding that external debt is a portion of total national debt. These numbers are self-contradictory. SkyDot (talk) 05:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] FALSE INTRO. "The economy of the United States is the world's second-largest national economy."

The opening statement "The economy of the United States is the world's second-largest national economy." is FALSE. The United States is STILL the world's largest national economy. Why do people insist on making these false statements? Fact is, there is NO national economy in the world right now that is larger then the US. For the Europhiles, news flash, the EU is NOT a country/nation. At least not yet anyways. Good luck with that.:)

The intro will be reverted to...

"The economy of the United States is the world's largest national economy."

Thank you. Akaloc (talk) 21:26, 9 June 2008 (UTC)