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Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

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Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#151

Post by yucky »

RichEO wrote: post #117
fleddr wrote: post #75

"The philosopher John Stuart Mill noted more than 200 years ago that, once decent living standards were assured, human efforts should be directed to the pursuit of social and moral progress and the increase of leisure, not the competitive struggle for material wealth" Yes, we took the wrong turn. Most people are subjected to a life long rat race of economic relevance/volatility where most of their waking hours are sp…

> A business? No. A bank? No. A country? No. In a modern democracy, only one of those three could conceivably have your interests at heart. Lumping them all together damages participation in democracy, which exacerbates the problem.

Democracy is incompatible with freedom. As soon as enough people decide I should die or lose my possessions or do some other thing I don't want to do, I am forced against my will with violence.

So we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom and foresight of the masses. No wonder we're screwed.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#152

Post by BurningFrog »

ummonk wrote: post #132
BurningFrog wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition, the monetary value of something is what people are willing to pay for it.

Yes but that's not the same as the more useful (no pun intended) definition of value - namely, utility.

They're both useful, for different purposes.

I recommend being clear about which definition is used, rather than trying to enforce one meaning should always be used.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#153

Post by eyelidlessness »

nostromo wrote: post #81
lkrubner wrote: post #58

Robert Kennedy, on the campaign trail in 1968: "Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising…

Quoted post unavailable.

> Who exactly thinks GDP should measure our courage, wisdom, and learning?

If you haven’t encountered this attitude, so much the better for you. But it isn’t a straw man. It isn’t so much they believe that GDP should measure those things, but that economic metrics are more important than any other concerns.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#154

Post by grecy »

nostromo wrote: post #62

It's hard to overstate how terrible this idea is. GDP is a concrete measure that is difficult to fake. Once you start arguing about the economic value of volunteering, divorce, income inequality, and crime -- you've opened the door to never being able to trust GDP again. Should we create new metrics to track progress? Sure. Should we stop tracking GDP? No way.

> GDP is a concrete measure that is difficult to fake

The best counter to that I've ever heard:

"Let's say I pay you $10M to eat a pile of shit, then for kicks you pay me $10M to eat a similar pile of shit. You know what the end result is? The GDP has increased $20M, and we both have huge shit-eating grins".

The GDP is laughably easy to fake.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#155

Post by club_tropical »

salus populi suprema lex

The primary measure should be the physical health of the humanstock. If your "line goes up" but you have obese, mentally fragile, neurotic people on your hands, you're doing something wrong. Many things will follow naturally once you make peak physical health the top goal.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#156

Post by joshe »

Here's a good explanation about why gdp is important.

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/four-reasons-why-gdp-is-a-...

It is only one measure of success, but it is not misleading. You can just use it and 6 other measures. Then if infant mortality goes way up you can still say let's figure out how to manage that and if it costs some gdp, that's fine. In fact real policy is saying we should spend more of that gdp on prenatal care for example. Doing that will neither make gdp go up or down.

And it's unclear who they're even talking about here. In the democracies politicians hardly talk about it at all. It's usually healthcare, some group is bad, or something should be regulated differently (like energy).

Here's even more depth: https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-economic-growth

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#157

Post by grecy »

dongobongo wrote: post #79

From Luke Smith's post on GDP: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-its-bad-to-have-high-gdp/ "GDP is only a measurement of how reliant a place or country is on the global economy. Self-sufficiency has a GDP of 0. Wasteful consooomerism has an extremely large GDP."

> "Wasteful consooomerism has an extremely large GDP."

I would add that GDP is a measure of how fast a country is using up the finite resources of the planet, racing to kill us all.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#158

Post by paxys »

mxkopy wrote: post #137
paxys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea who Luke Smith is but none of that article makes any sense. GDP is the measure of economic activity. A self-sufficient community would not have a GDP of 0 because they would still have transactions among themselves. Perfect self-sufficiency would actually generate a very high GDP number because of how diverse and specialized the community would have to be to take care of itself. Outside of that everyth…

> A self-sufficient community would not have a GDP of 0 because they would still have transactions among themselves. Perfect self-sufficiency would actually generate a very high GDP number because of how diverse and specialized the community would have to be to take care of itself. And all this is assuming that the community uses money. A self sufficient community would have 0 GDP iff no money was exchanged.

That doesn't matter. Value was still exchanged, and can be measured.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#159

Post by deltree7 »

transcriptase wrote: post #6
deltree7 wrote: post #4

Nobody makes any policy decisions based on GDP. It's just a proxy of economic activity. Nobody ever said, We (won't) need policy X because we are at Y GDP. Companies make decision based on supply/demand. So, this whole research is kinda pointless. In fact the worst thing anyone could do is have a metric and make the entire nation focus on that.

Tell that to the Canadian government. It currently considers massive deficits fine because of our debt-to-GDP ratio, despite GDP being driven by a real estate bubble for the last several years.

Once again show me an economic policy that is tied to GDP

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#160

Post by edmcnulty101 »

nostromo wrote: post #81
lkrubner wrote: post #58

Robert Kennedy, on the campaign trail in 1968: "Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising…

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