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AI capex is so big that it's affecting economic statistics

(paulkedrosky.com)
339 points throw0101c | 7 comments | 18 Jul 25 19:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.709s | source | bottom
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jonas21 ◴[18 Jul 25 21:09 UTC] No.44609857[source]▶
I don't know... 1.2% of GDP just doesn't seem that extreme to me. Certainly nowhere near "eating the economy" level compared to other transformative technologies or programs like:

- Apollo program: 4%

- Railroads: 6% (mentioned by the author)

- Covid stimulus: 27%

- WW2 defense: 40%

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raincole ◴[18 Jul 25 21:18 UTC] No.44609942[source]▶
Yeah that's my first reaction to. 1.2% doesn't sound much. It's just people making headlines out of thin air. If it lists the water and energy consumption I might be more concerned.

Slightly off-topic, but ~9% of GDP is generated by "financial services" in the US. Personally I think it's a more alarming data point.

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giantg2 ◴[19 Jul 25 01:00 UTC] No.44611558[source]▶
Why is 9% for financial services bad? This should cover fees/interest from everything like loans, transactions, mortgages, advice, investing, etc. It doesn't seem that surprising to me that the systems that are the backbone for all the money operations that power the rest of the economy make up about 10%.
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1. anon7000 ◴[19 Jul 25 01:52 UTC] No.44611841[source]▶
I get your point, but the flip side is that private companies like visa and Mastercard get to skip 2.5%+ off the entire economy. Visa has more than 50% profit margin, and it’s not like these companies are innovating with all that extra cash either. It’s just money from my pocket to some rich investor somewhere
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2. rogerrogerr ◴[19 Jul 25 03:15 UTC] No.44612263[source]▶
Visa and Mastercard aren’t skimming 2.5% off the economy; the majority of the interchange fees go to banks (which Visa is not; their actual product is VisaNet which provides payment infrastructure, broadly.)

Trivially verifiable by Visa’s revenue being $35B, which is not even close to 1% of just US GDP (about $30T).

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3. bluGill ◴[19 Jul 25 11:06 UTC] No.44614447[source]▶
Cash costs more nearly that much when you count all the time spent counting and recounting it - at least 8 times for every transaction. (the buyer finds and counts, then the cashier counts, then count change. Then the manager counts and recounts the till, finally the bank counts and recounts it - several of the above will come up with a miscount and recount additional times to verify). Then we add crime loss on top of that.

visa is saving the country a lot of time/money.

4. sneak ◴[19 Jul 25 11:20 UTC] No.44614529[source]▶
Not the entire economy, just retail and some b2b.

OpenAI isn’t putting two billion in GPUs on their corporate credit card.

5. giantg2 ◴[19 Jul 25 11:41 UTC] No.44614664[source]▶
And Visa is international, so some of that $35B is ex-US.
6. giantg2 ◴[19 Jul 25 11:49 UTC] No.44614712[source]▶
"from my pocket to some rich investor somewhere"

Or your retirement account. Everyone is mad about investors and companies making money. Sure, there are ultra wealthy people (mostly founders) that benefit disproportionately. However, most people who hope to retire some day rely on a 401k, pension, etc which is dependent on stocks. Retirement accounts have about $36T in the US, mostly in equities and corporate bonds.

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7. Newlaptop ◴[19 Jul 25 15:52 UTC] No.44616540[source]▶
"Founders" are a tiny percentage of the rich, they're just the ones in the news.

The richest 1% own half the wealth in the world and the gap is getting wider. Since 2020, for every dollar of new global wealth gained by someone in the bottom 90%, one of the world’s billionaires has gained $1.7 million. (Source: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/wealth-inequality-o...)

So yes, some of the wealth is going to your retirement account. But for every penny going to a middle-class professional workers retirement, there's about a thousand dollars going to some hedge fund manager or the trust fund of the grandson of some robber baron who got rich a hundred years ago.