According to the rules of national income accounting, in the absence of market prices, the contribution of the government sector to GDP is measured by the wages paid out by the government, regardless of how productive or useful the government jobs are. Thus, the performance difference relative to Germany, say, could be caricatured as follows: while Germans collect part of the private value-added as taxes, which they then spend on unemployment benefits, Scandinavians in addition give their unemployed a desk and count the unemployment benefits as value-added in the government sector and, therefore, a contribution to GDP.
根据国民收入会计规则，在没有市场价格的情况下，政府部门对GDP的贡献是根据政府支付的工资收入来衡量的，而无论这些活动是否富有成效或者有用。这样，与德国相比的经济表现差别就可以用以下的话来进行讽刺性的描述，那就是，德国征收部分私营部门的增值税用于失业救济，而斯堪的那维亚国家则还给失业的人一张上班的桌子，并且把失业救济计算为政府部门的附加值，从而成为对GDP的贡献。