Can you take government spending out of GDP?

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  Npr.

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  This is the indicator from Planet Money.

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  I'm Waylon Wong.

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  And I'm Paddy Hirsch.

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  The big mama of economic indices,

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  Gross Domestic Product is under attack again, this time from within.

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  Have I seen this movie before?

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  Probably.

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  And GDP has always come in for criticism from people

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  with a whole range of nich about what goes into the data

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  and what's left out.

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  But those criticisms usually come from non governmental agencies and institutions.

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  Last week, the attack on US GDP came from the man whose own agency generates that number each month,

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  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

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  You know, the Commerce Department runs the statistics of gdp.

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  You know, the governments historically have messed with gdp.

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  They count government spending as part of gdp.

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  So I'm going to separate those two and make it transparent.

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  On today's show,

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  we'll look at why government spending is part of GDP

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