Report Card Due

     The next set of U.S. GDP numbers will be released in a few days.  On March 27th, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will look back at 2024 and the numbers for the fourth quarter of that year.

     A month later, at the end of April, the earliest look at GDP for the first quarter of 2025 will be released.  This doesn't quite provide an apples-to-apples comparison, but it'll be numbers that can be held up side-by side.  There is one caveat: the Trump Administration plans to remove the kinds of government spending that are normally included in the formula, and I'm not sure if that's happening for the numbers to be released this month or if it will be introduced in April.

     It has never included some of the biggest chunks of "government money" -- transfer payments like Social Security don't go into the math.  But the government spending is not small; The U. S. went from -9.3% growth in four years under Herbert Hoover to +10.1% in twelve years under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the huge bump comes from 1941 - 43: WW II spending.

     So we'll see what comes out, and what the pundits think it might mean.  BEA is filled with exactly the kinds of math, statistics and economist geeks you'd hope it would be, and they love to share their numbers.  There will be plenty to look at.

     (Speaking of GDP and industry, how many of you have read of Samuel Slater?  Oh, we all learned about Eli Whitney, who turned cotton -- and, somewhat inadvertently, slavery -- into an industry, but once you have the fiber, it's still got to be spun, and it was Slater who got the U. S. into the business of spinning on an industrial scale and helped fill New England with mills.)