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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)

#281

Post by galbar »

riffraff wrote: post #263
yucky wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you've never really engaged in political philosophy very thoroughly? The opposite, I grudgingly came to this conclusion after decades of believing (or I guess, hoping) differently. Not that it's an original conclusion, many philosophers called it out long before I was even born. Took me awhile to see it. When you say "we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom of the masses" you're making a pro-eli…

> Government only grows But, say, in western Europe, a ton of things used to be run solely by the government (water, energy production, steel, carbon, telcos, radio, tv, train, local transport, air transport, postal services) and have now moved out of the government purview, isn't that the opposite of "government always grows"?

Yet in the European country I live in, taxes have not stopped growing throughout the last 20 years. The government just finds different ways of spending the money, not necessarily related to the welfare system.

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

#282

Post by fulafel »

leetcrew wrote: post #242
fulafel wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "once decent living standards were assured" part covers this.

"decent living standards" are a moving target; the definition is always relative to what is currently possible. in mill's time, this might have amounted to having a roof to sleep under and a reliable source of calories. germ theory of disease was just starting to gain acceptance in the latter part of his lifetime. today we seriously consider providing free healthcare to all, and in some countries this is already a re…

Universal health care history details: it came about in the 1950s/60s in the poor post-ww2 conditions, and is now in 50+ countries.

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

#283

Post by MandieD »

riffraff wrote: post #263
yucky wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you've never really engaged in political philosophy very thoroughly? The opposite, I grudgingly came to this conclusion after decades of believing (or I guess, hoping) differently. Not that it's an original conclusion, many philosophers called it out long before I was even born. Took me awhile to see it. When you say "we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom of the masses" you're making a pro-eli…

> Government only grows But, say, in western Europe, a ton of things used to be run solely by the government (water, energy production, steel, carbon, telcos, radio, tv, train, local transport, air transport, postal services) and have now moved out of the government purview, isn't that the opposite of "government always grows"?

And given the degradation of the postal service and passenger rail system since privatization, one might accept growing government as the lesser of two evils.

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

#284

Post by nullc »

29083011397778 wrote: post #171
nullc wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that kind of speech would alienate a lot of the public. An intelligent politician wouldn't even if they could-- unless they were running a very specialized campaign. It's informative to look up some very old videos of George W speaking-- he sounds much more educated than he did when in office. Now that speaking in a highly educated manner has become a signal of elite indifference (however that came to pas…

> Since anyone who could do it could turn it off, and they should turn it off I sincerely hope you mean they ought to turn it off for the campaign trail, and even that's a depressing recommendation for those seeking public support. Words matter . The language we use to discuss the world around us has a distinct influence on how we see, interact with, and frame both problems and solutions. Lowering the level of discou…

I think there is a lot of room for nuance here. Surely you don't think that quoting greek playwrights is equivalent to communicating effectively. :)

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

#285

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#286

Post by NavinF »

grecy wrote: post #154
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.

LMAO I'm sure that sounded great in your head, but if that service was actually worth 10mm, both parties would have to pay taxes on that income when they report it to the gov't for inclusion in GDP. Yes this applies even if no money changed hands: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420

And yes there are workarounds, but clearly it's not that easy to manipulate GDP. If anything, you want to underreport these numbers so you don't owe as much.

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

#287

Post by Ekaros »

MikePlacid wrote: post #207
LeapingLennie wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist recently reported on a study that used the brightness of countries' lights at night as proxy for GDP[1][2]. The study suggests China and other autocracies have significantly exaggerated their GDP growth over the last twenty years. [1]: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/09/29/a-study-... [2]: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/how-much-should-we-tr...

One of the things that struck me as weird after landing in the US - is how wasteful the lightning here is. If I was an autocratic ruler, I would definitely scaled it back a couple of times.

Or in general. Living in sparsely populated country with what in other places would qualify as towns. Driving motorway towards one of the at night. Like tens of kilometers out in middle forest you see a clearly lighted up horizon. The light pollution is real.

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

#288

Post by galbar »

yucky wrote: post #198
jerojero wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you've never really engaged in political philosophy very thoroughly? Much like any political system you can imagine, a democratic system requires a complex web of rules and regulations to function properly. For one, so-called democracies always require more specification. Are you talking about direct democracy? Are you talking about deliberative democracy? Are you talking about representative democracy? Dem…

I imagine you've never really engaged in political philosophy very thoroughly? The opposite, I grudgingly came to this conclusion after decades of believing (or I guess, hoping) differently. Not that it's an original conclusion, many philosophers called it out long before I was even born. Took me awhile to see it. When you say "we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom of the masses" you're making a pro-eli…

One could argue that liberal democracy offered a solution by making everyone have the same rights and focusing on making sure every one individual's right are protected in front of the majority.

The idea that everyone has the same rights and noone can legally break them was the pre-political basis of our democracies.

One could argue that, as of late, we've been focusing more on collectives and less on individuals.

Collectives can't be all equal (i.e. per definition they might have different size, us vs. them) leading to them causing an unhealthy imbalance in social power dynamics, that wouldn't happen if we focused our attention to the individual.

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

#289

Post by lmm »

refurb wrote: post #269
lmm wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usefulness is purely the decision of the buyer. You may think buying an expensive car to impress others is stupid, but so? All car sales don’t have to fit within your definition of usefulness. Exactly. So saying that a more expensive car is always more useful is crazy. Maybe the more expensive car is too big for the roads where I live, or has worse fuel economy, or has less interior space.... Price and usefulness a…

Of course they are equivalent, in aggregate across all purchasers. You aren’t the only buyer, but if they are selling cars someone thinks it’s worth the price . That’s the beauty of free markets - multiple products for different tastes and different perceptions of value. I can go out and choose from a small or large, basic or luxury, fuel efficient or not, large capacity or small. If I don’t think the price is worth…

Even in aggregate, there's a great deal of slippage between the two things. Making a small number of cars for very rich people might attract more revenue than making a large number of cars for regular people, even if the latter would be more useful overall. Manipulative advertising and predatory salespeople might mean you can sell cars for more even if those cars are less useful. A car that pollutes less, or is less likely to kill pedestrians, is certainly (all other things being equal) more useful, but since the buyer doesn't benefit they are unlikely to pay much extra.

In a theoretically perfect free market, prices might be equivalent to usefulness. But very few real-world markets achieve that, and the differences are important.

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

#290

Post by veltas »

LeapingLennie wrote: post #141
strangeattractr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean when you say China fakes its GDP?

The Economist recently reported on a study that used the brightness of countries' lights at night as proxy for GDP[1][2]. The study suggests China and other autocracies have significantly exaggerated their GDP growth over the last twenty years. [1]: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/09/29/a-study-... [2]: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/how-much-should-we-tr...

I want to say "this could be a false correlation" and recommend against believing the study's suggestion, but the damage is already done. Most of the thousands of people that read this article and the handful of people that read your comment have come away being convinced of something that could very well be false as if it were scientific fact because it was in the Economist and it's a "study".
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