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

(paulkedrosky.com)
358 points throw0101c | 1 comments | 18 Jul 25 19:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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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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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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1. 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.