I mean, you don’t have to look at opinion pieces to see that US cooks their numbers. It’s openly admitted on the BEA website. The whole imputation bit is basically fictitious GDP. For example, when a person buys a home, the government adds that person’s imaginary rent to the GDP. That is, if he didn’t buy a home, he would have spent X dollars on rent.
I mean, you don’t have to look at opinion pieces to see that US cooks their numbers. It’s openly admitted on the BEA website. The whole imputation bit is basically fictitious GDP. For example, when a person buys a home, the government adds that person’s imaginary rent to the GDP. That is, if he didn’t buy a home, he would have spent X dollars on rent.
https://www.bea.gov/help/faq/488