That’s for a population of just 16M people. If it scales then value for a 1% increase with the US population of 300M is about 2/3rds of a billion of your US $.

Sorry.

I once read that we need to stop thinking of everything in terms of GDP.

For example, as a society we all agreed that it was not healthy for so many people to be buying new cars so often and yet now that people are not……its a catastrophe. The bloated car industry is getting cut back to a more rational level and of course people will lose their jobs. Most people consider this a “bad thing.”

Experts are always telling us to exercise 30 minutes per day but what if people ACTUALLY did. Many doctors would be on unemployment, pharmacies would be shutting down and pharacutical company stock would go down the toilet! We would need a bailout for medical companies! Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Depends upon who you ask.

As long as we think about things in terms of GDP we might have the best interest of the country at heart.

I rejoice in the car companies hurting. I hope they take a permanent 50% drop in sales regardless of how many people lose their jobs.

And this is coming from a very free market conservative type.