Sometimes it’s really easy to determine someone’s politics by just paying attention to the words they use. If someone refers to the estate tax as the “death tax,” I’ll bet my paycheck that person is a Republican. (It’s not a tax on dying; it’s a tax on dying with lots of money.) Whether someone refers to being “pro-choice” or “pro-abortion” is another telltale sign of one’s political ideology in many cases.

In macroeconomics, the National Income Accounting identity states that three things must always be equal: Income = Output = Spending. When I purchase a Subway footlong for $5, spending in the economy increases by $5. I am buying $5 worth of output, so output increases by $5. And the $5 that Subway receives will go to its employees, suppliers, and owners, becoming their income, so income increases by $5.

According to the CIA Factbook, a great website to find a variety of details about different countries, the United States population is 303,824,640 and the world population is 6,706,993,152, which gives us 4.53% of the world population. U.S. GDP (our measure of output) is $14.58 trillion, while world GDP is $70.65 trillion, so we make up 20.64% of world output.

Now, I can take that information and the National Income Accounting identity and spin it three different ways, depending on how I want the U.S. to look. If I want to chastise the U.S. for consuming so much of the world’s resources, I say that the U.S. has 4.53% of the world’s people but we consumes 20.64% of the world’s resources — and that’s true. If I want to imply that the U.S. income comes at the expense of poor people around the globe, I say that the U.S. has 4.53% of the world’s population but has 20.64% of the world’s income, implying that we have more than our “fair” share. But it is nonetheless true that with only 4.53% of the world’s population, we produce 20.64% of the world’s output — a fact which should lead one to conclude that Americans are extremely produtive and industrious.

The next time someone mentions that we consume more than our “fair share” of the world’s resources, make sure to tell them that we also produce much more than our “fair share” too.