Not overly impressed with this info-graphic. GDP is a worthless metric.
The problem is not simply that it doesn't measure βwhat's important in life.β It doesn't even measure actual prosperity. π§΅
The problem is not simply that it doesn't measure βwhat's important in life.β It doesn't even measure actual prosperity. π§΅
Those orange areas on the map produce increasingly little: corporate ideology, debt instruments, "dickpick apps for adolescents," diet pill research, trade agreements to import cheap plastic junk which will end up in landfills.
Somehow GDP keeps rising while life keeps getting worse for most Americans. Our buildings are ugly. Our food is poison. Our stories are trash. 73.6% of American adults are overweight or obese. Trash is everywhere. Microplastics are found in babies. Etc.
Ergo, worthless metric.
Ergo, worthless metric.
Here's one subtle but consequential flaw, indicative of a larger failure to measure anything important:
Daycare adds to GDP while homemaking does not. We count it as a W when children are raised by someone other than their own mother, while she goes to work for Wells Fargo.
Daycare adds to GDP while homemaking does not. We count it as a W when children are raised by someone other than their own mother, while she goes to work for Wells Fargo.
If Mrs Jones and Mrs Smith, two stay-at-home-moms, hired their services out to each other so that each did the cooking and cleaning for the other's family and got paid for it, GDP would rise.
Nothing additional would be produced or done, but now money is changing hands.
Nothing additional would be produced or done, but now money is changing hands.
It's a very big deal when your economic metrics and models disparage homemakers, those who dedicate themselves to the raising of families, speaking of them as though they are some net zero. Real prosperity depends on future generations.
Then there's the failure of GDP to count for production-for-use. Again: this metric cannot compute anything that isn't marked by the exchange of cash.
My mother, for example, grew up on a farm. Her family mostly ate what they grew. Economists don't count this as part of GDP.
My mother, for example, grew up on a farm. Her family mostly ate what they grew. Economists don't count this as part of GDP.
But any expenditures at MegaGrocery do count as part of GDP. I'm not telling you anything new in saying these globalist grocers are hotbeds of poisonous foods and corporate dystopianism. They also necessitate cross-country transportation and endless packaging.
By counting one and not the other, this metric encourages some things and discourages others. In both cases that Iβve mentioned, something worse has been encouraged over something better.
So this metric is not just a neutral tool, but an active agent.
So this metric is not just a neutral tool, but an active agent.
And when politicians are judged by this one be-all, end-all metric, they will do their best to dial up the behaviors that contribute to GDP. They hardly know how to think in terms other than the economist's.
We almost have no other criteria for evaluating policies, trends, and developments other than to ask whether they are good for The Economy (that is, good for GDP).
So many dumb conclusions follow:
So many dumb conclusions follow:
The list of problems with GDP could go on.
The point is that it treats a human being as an abstracted economic unit. Worse, in making GDP the main metric with which we measure our progress, we encourage people to act like mere economic units.
The point is that it treats a human being as an abstracted economic unit. Worse, in making GDP the main metric with which we measure our progress, we encourage people to act like mere economic units.
If you don't believe me, just as Simon Kuznets, the man who invented the modern notion of GDP. He testified before Congress that it was an inadequate measure of prosperity.
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