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How GDP Hides Industrial Decline

letter.palladiummag.com · 6,437 words · saved by 1 readers

For the past few years I have been mulling a paradox: U.S. GDP keeps going up, yet it seems like we make less stuff and that most of the smart people I know work fake jobs. Growing up in the nineties, most of my toys and clothes had tags saying “Made in Hong Kong” or “Made in Vietnam.” But the high-skill, high-tech goods—the washing machine, the car, my computer—were often made in America. Now? From my e-bike to my laptop, from my refrigerator to my mattress, very few goods I own, high-tech or low-tech, were made in the USA. Meanwhile, I have heard arguments that America is actually making more things than ever. According to The Economist, lost jobs are due to automation, not foreign competition, and it is a good thing that machines have liberated us from factory work and enabled more service jobs. Everyone from the American Enterprise Institute to The Wall Street Journal to Wikipedia agrees that U.S. manufacturing has not just not significantly fallen—but it has never been higher. Som

How GDP Hides Industrial Decline A deep-dive into GDP methodology shows that it is neither objective nor an actual measure of production. Serious people should stop using it. Oct 03, 2025 110 22 Share Ed Brown/Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C. This article by Patrick Fitzsimmons was published at Palladium Magazine on October 3, 2025. For the past few years I have been mulling a paradox: U.S. GDP keeps going up, yet it seems like we make less stuff and that most of the smart people I know work fake jobs. Growing up in the nineties, most of my toys and clothes had tags saying “Made in

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