L Tower | U/C | 58 st | 205 m | St. Lawrence

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by monkeyronin

I think you're referring to the highly dubious PricewaterhouseCoopers list, which lists Greater Toronto's GDP at $253 billion - well below the national GDP per capita. I'm pretty sure we had discussed this in the past on SSP, but the $323 billion estimate from TD Financial seems far more likely.

Also, far more important than the GDP number is the actual quality of life. And in the case of the US, the GDP is always going to get a big boost from the high cost of things like private health care & education - not something we want to emulate. And by this measure, Toronto is already ahead of anywhere in the US.

The arguments I read on SSP were flawed; they're comparing apples to oranges. $253 is for 2008, $276 is from 2010, so to see if the share of national GDP looks correct you have to look at GDP in those years and the share of Toronto's population relative to national in those years. None of those adjustments were done properly by those people making those arguments. $253 and $276 correspond to what one would expect in the years they correspond to. Btw, Toronto is near the national average in GDP per capita.

The same cities ahead of Toronto in the PWC list are ahead of Toronto in other lists as well. It's astonishing how many people in this city just won't acknowledge that other cities have a higher GDP than we do. $323 billion? There are still about 20-21 cities with a larger GDP than us. Those other cities had their GDP go up as well since 2008.

Btw, the conversation was about GDP, not GINI coefficients and PPP (which I'm fully versed in).