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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)

#161

Post by eyelidlessness »

kortilla wrote: post #128
RichEO wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 absolutely does not care about you and thinking it does is damaging to democracy. Democracy is just executing the will of the majority. If your interests don’t align with thah majority, the country is not acting on your behalf. Knowing that an participating in democracy without tying up your identity in the outcomes is critical.

> Democracy is just executing the will of the majority.

Only if you’re a dictionary. Democracy as practiced routinely resists the will of the majority (eg attitudes towards climate, reproductive rights), and also routinely reinforces minoritarian protections once established (eg accessibility for people with disabilities).

Democracy is ultimately the same thing as any other governing philosophy, except it’s more malleable by people without concentrated power than most other systems. Certainly more than a bank or whatever.

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

#162

Post by glial »

yucky wrote: post #151
RichEO wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Curious to know your definition of freedom, and what system of government it is compatible with.

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

#163

Post by [deleted] »

Waterluvian wrote: post #122
nostromo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It kind of feels like this comment is the straw man. There’s nothing wrong with GDP as a metric, especially if you want to know the economic horsepower of a nation. The argument being made is that it’s not a good metric when measuring success of a nation.

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by zsz »

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…

Wrong turn? Rat race? Compared to what?

Your ancestors 200 years ago were malnourished, working the fields all day to eke out a miserable existence, never enjoying a single luxury in life. They didn't know how to read or write, and in any case wouldn't have had time for such luxurious activities.

Human progress has brought us to the point where we have the free time to complain about how disadvantaged we are and how unfair life is, without giving a thought to the fact that our daily lives are far more luxurious than those of kings who lived 200 years ago.

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

#165

Post by robocat »

_skel wrote: post #90
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.

Seriously. If there was an obvious alternate metric, we'd already be using it. Measuring well-being and happiness will never be straightforward and uncontroversial, despite what the authors of the article say. You don't need to look much past the first few paragraphs of the article to see an obvious bias about income inequality. That reveals what attempts to find new metrics are really about: the authors want to use…

> a set of metrics which have built-in left-wing assumptions

Introducing political statements on HN and feeding them is frowned upon, but I will bite: the right wing also needs an answer to the problems caused by inequality. Solving issues caused by inequality can easily be a right wing objective: for example when fixing an issue also helps the middle class or the rich.

A metric for inequality can be politically completely neutral, yet it will trigger partisans on the left or right. I do agree that metrics and solutions often have covert political biases.

I think that regardless of your political inclination, the core message of the article remains the same.

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

#166

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

I am sure the Afghan Taliban and the Iranian Mullahs agree:

You can't put a price on female virtue/modesty/chastity. So while keeping our women locked away at home depresses the GDP, it is a misleading measure of national success anyway.

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

#167

Post by kortilla »

the-smug-one wrote: post #134
kortilla wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> filled it with dimwits? Not knowing Aeschylus has nothing to do with wit.

To be dim-witted just means stupid, hasn't got to do with wit.

Stupidity and wit are intelligence and have nothing to do with historical knowledge.

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

#168

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

And shortly thereafter, he was assassinated.

Another historical "fun fact", is that MLK wasn't assassinated while pushing for civil rights. He was killed once he shifted his focus to financial injustice and wealth inequality.

Two might not be a pattern, but it's no accident these historical figures were both challenging the deep pockets status quo and they both died prematurely.

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

#169

Post by akomtu »

a-dub wrote: post #47

p50 standard of living seems like the obvious one to me.

If I were an ultra-rich who owns 10% of the entire nation's wealth, it would be rational to promote GDP as the main indicator of success, because 10% of that GDP belongs to me. On the other hand, if I were the collective consciousness of the people, I'd define success in the percentile terms, like you said.

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

#170

Post by Ambolia »

strangeattractr wrote: post #139
Ambolia wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment would be less misleading if it was just "total people working" / "total people in the country".

No it wouldn’t. It would be bloated by the number of people with serious disabilities, health conditions and retirees. As your population ages you would get a bump in unemployment that tells you nothing about the demand for labour. In my first Economics subject in high school they told us to never look at unemployment without looking at the participation rate with it.

I think it would be useful to know if a country has a much higher dependent population than another country. It could highlight dynamics that get ofuscated when some countries put large parts of their populations under the "unemployable" label or quietly pushed into black markets, making official unemployment numbers impossible to compare with other populations.
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