GDP is just a number. it does not mean the economy.
It is not just the people who suffer. every business other than megacorps suffer. countless businesses closed. I see a bunch of empty shuttered storefronts.
I mean, using the GDP as a metric for the economy is usually fine, just right now that it's failing really badly. It's a very good number telling how well business is doing. It's highly correlated with a number of different other metrics such as poverty, job losses, etc.
It's understandable that people do use it as a proxy for the economy, but right now that doesn't work. That's basically what I'm trying to get across.
Immigration is part of the reason it doesn't work. Immigration makes the GDP go up, but it doesn't help out any American not in the stock market or employing them. But honestly, I'd say inflation did worse things to America than immigration because inflation is just so bad.
Isn't the average American technically in 10k+ in debt or something once you spread the numbers out. That's nuts, even if everyone was 10 bucks in debt that should be a problem. 10k in debt for everyone should be a national crisis!
It's a weird statistic. Take credit card debt (about $5k/peson). Right now, I'm technically about $1k in credit card debt because I had something expensive to pay for this month, and used a credit card. I am going to pay off the entire balance automatically on the date I'm supposed to though, and pay no money in interest. That's nor really debt that's an issue. Basically, you need to look at people who maintain consistent credit card debt, and figure out what they have.
In addition, the average isn't a good person to examine. You'd want the median here. Basically, credit card debt works similarly to the whale model of free to play games: a few people are suckers and pay for everyone else's free games. So instead of the average American having about $5k credit card debt, the large majority of Americans are fine, in my position or something, and then some are just completely screwed having something like $100k credit card debt.
As a side note, average income is actually a fine statistic, if it comes from the American Community Survey (ACS). Basically, to protect privacy of people with huge incomes, they cap any income over 300k at 300k. So LeBron James would be listed as having earned 300k last year if he had filled it out.