From AP via Newsday —
Indicators measure the nation’s unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.
“That’s a source that didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. “Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay.”
Cheney is right. eBay is an important development as fewer and fewer Americans will be able to afford garages to have old-fashioned garage sales.
Update: From Brad DeLong —
Cheney needs a staff who will tell him that the $2.0 billion or so in eBay’s domestic revenues are already included in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis’s estimates of GDP.