John At The Center

But in fact, ‘personal consumption expenditures’ in the U.S. is a grab-bag category which includes all sorts of money—like Medicare spending by the government—which never passes through the hands of households. PCE also includes all the consumer goods imported into the U.S.—cars, computers, clothing, and the like—which create very little economic activity in this country.

In fact, by my very rough calculations, the money that people actually pull out of their paychecks and bank accounts to pay for domestically-produced goods and services drives about 40% of economic activity in this country. That’s still large—but the U.S. is nowhere near as dependent on consumer spending as people think.

via Get It Straight: Consumer Spending is *not* 70% of GDP – BusinessWeek.