Posted on 08/01/2017 12:48:24 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Missile tests boost North Korean economic growth
GDP expanded 3.9% on mining, manufacturing and utilities, says Bank of Korea
Jul 21, 2017
North Korea’s economy grew in 2016 at the fastest pace since 1999, helped by a recovery from a drought in 2015.
Military spending, including on testing nuclear weapons and missiles, also boosted growth, and raised tensions in the region.
Gross domestic product expanded 3.9 per cent from a year earlier, according to an estimate from the Bank of Korea.
The expansion was concentrated in mining, manufacturing, and utilities such as electricity, gas, and water supplies. Per capita income in the North was estimated at 1.46 million won ($1,300), or about 4.5 per cent of that of its southern neighbour.
China accounted for 93 per cent of North Korea’s trade in 2016, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in Seoul said in a separate statement on Friday. The Pyongyang regime’s overall trade volume increased 4.7 per cent last year to $6.55 billion, the data showed.
The BOK said it estimates North Korea’s economic growth by using raw data compiled by related organisations such as the intelligence agency and unification ministry.
The calculation has limits, with the BOK using South Korean data such as prices to substitute for unknown information.
North Korea’s missiles and development of weapons of mass destruction are measured as investment and production and support GDP growth, said Shin Seung-cheol, an official at the BOK’s economic statistics department.
Missile tests could also be included in government spending, Shin said, adding that it is hard to tell from the data when the weapons were developed, or how many weapons there are.
(Excerpt) Read more at irishtimes.com ...
N. Korean can pour their revenue into their missile and nuclear weapons' development, but this is counted as investments. It does not really lead to improvement of living standard of ordinary people, except small number of engineers and scientists. In that sense, this story of economic growth can be misleading because it gives the inflated impression of real improvement in living standard.
P!
Besides developing nuclear weapons, North Korea is also mining bitcoin
https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/07/27/well-developing-nuclear-weapons-north-korea-also-mining-bitcoin/
They hack a bank to steal money, are accused of ransomware extortion, and running Internet gambling sites. On top of that, they have been running insurance fraud for a long time.
And they’re the biggest counterfeiters of US notes in the world.
We have the same problem in America, counting Government spending as part of GDP. If anything, most of it should be subtracted.
I think the Keynes vs. Hayek videos put paid to this economic fallacy.
HAYEK:
The last time I checked wars only destroy.
There was no multiplier. Consumption just shrank
as we used scarce resources for every new tank.
Pretty perverse to call that prosperity.
Ration meat. Ration butter. A life of austerity.
When that war spending ended, your friends cried disaster.
Yet the economy thrived and grew even faster.
So, you and I are partly funding the NORKS missile program.
Feel better?
North Korea is the missile testing grounds for Iran.
They also run huge cash counterfeiting operations, too. Aren’t they the world’s biggest counterfeiter?
If you build a missle and shoot it into the sea, are you richer or poorer?
Broken Window Fallacy.
All “economic growth” from weapons production and war is the Broken Window Fallacy.
WWII did not end the Depression. The Depression ended in 1946-47.
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