Growth in electricity generation over the last 25 years:
China: 6000%
USA: ~0%
A reminder that electricity generation is actually a good indicator of real (productive) economic growth as opposed to fake growth through financial sleight of hand.
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Eh, as a Marxist-Leninist living in the United States, I understand that we're using way too much electricity as it is.
I mean, China is still a growing and developing country. In theory, it makes perfect sense for their electricity use to skyrocket right now. But the United States basically already grew and short of population growth. We really don't need any more electricity.
I mean, we still heat a lot of houses with gas that we can turn over to electricity, and we still have too many gas cars that we can convert to EVs. So there is something there.
There are way too many single family homes that are like three to five bedrooms with only two people living there because either they're expecting kids and haven't had them yet or their kids have all moved out or whatever. And they still keep the whole place exceptionally cold or hot or whatever they want independent of the climate they live in.
So I guess that is to say that this graph is not unexpected. China is still growing and their electricity use is going up and that makes sense. But there's really no reason for the United States electricity use to go up. Unless somebody has a compelling reason otherwise.
Electricity is used in industry. American industry simply is not growing
This is true. Our industry is not growing. But according to that graph, since the US is using half the electricity of China, and China has four and a quarter times as many people. On a per person basis, the United States is still using twice as much electricity per person as China is.
The United States chose their industry. They build military. China is actually manufacturing things, not just for themselves, but for the world. I'm happy to see that China continues to grow and I'm happy to see more Belt and Road initiatives spreading.
I'm not saying that the US isn't already using an exorbitant amount of electricity per person, especially if you compare it to the global average. The point is that this graph indicates a lack of real growth. Because the GDP most certainly did increase over that same period of time, and if that growth was due to actual productive capabilities increasing, then you would expect to see a corresponding growth in electricity generation.
Moreover the population of the US actually grew by more than 20% (60 million people) over that same 20 year period, so even if you assume no industrial growth you would still expect to see more of a growth due to personal consumption. And i don't think that personal consumption went down that much, so the only thing that you can conclude from this is that industry has not only been stagnating but actually shrinking.