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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)

#321

Post by gadders »

thewarrior wrote: post #310
roenxi wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In truth, pretty much nobody really knows for sure what policies actually will increase GDP... Have they tried securing access to large amounts of cheap energy? It is a bit of a win-win because either GDP goes up and case closed or they can sit back and relax in luxury mulling why GDP didn't go up despite massive increases in the general prosperity. Energy isn't the entire story because there also need to be people…

Yes they created a global reserve currency they can print to get energy as they need and a super large military to force everyone to go along with it. Securing large amounts of cheap energy is non trivial as europe is beginning to find out.

Not trivial, but there are a few foot-guns that can be avoided like not shutting down your nuclear power plants or not giving licenses to actually dig the energy out of the ground.

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

#322

Post by thomasfl »

...and it is destroying our planet fast.

GDP was never ment to be used as tool for measuring anything other than how fast the British economy grew after the recession. A lot has happened since then, almost 100 years ago. GDP has unfortunately stuck as a tool.

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

#323

Post by neffy »

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.

Go back 150 years, and what was tracked was actual production. Iron mined, boats produced etc.

GDP is a bad measure for all the reasons above, and because prices do not work the way GDP want's them too. As another poster alluded to, increase total production and cause prices to fall across the board, and the logic of the system is that GDP drops. The only reason we see GDP increasing is that there is an underlying increase in the measurement (money), and that feeds into the measurement data.

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

#324

Post by bumby »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #247
bumby wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like it coincided with differences in attitude about education. I’ve forgotten the exact stats, but in decades past college students overwhelming said the purpose of college was to develop a philosophy of life whereas now the predominant answer is to find a good job.

I think this is the wrong way to characterize this change. What changed isn't the attitudes of individual students, but rather the demographics of the students themselves. In the ages past most people did not go to college, and most jobs did not require a degree, so only those who could afford to (upper class) went, and for those people, getting a job simply isn't that big of a concern.

You’re right, but I was making a statement about society more than individual students. It’s been a slow march. The demographic shift can be traced all the way back to the Morrill Act which started the wheels in motion for college to become a vocational endeavor rather than a cultural one.

I do feel that a large swath of jobs don't really need the college degree they seem to require. That sort of college-as-a-credential business model seems like a self-licking ice cream cone.

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

#325

Post by osterwood »

Nullabillity wrote: post #100
Retric wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that token why not exclude entertainment spending as useless. In reality people devote surplus to things they want rather than pure needs.

Entertainment is positive value ("I want to watch/play/whatever this because I enjoy it"), healthcare is compensation for negative value ("I got injured and want to feel a little less shit"). Nobody goes to the doctor just because they felt like doing it that day. Counting the positive contribution of healthcare without counting the negative contributions of the injuries that lead people to seek healthcare is going t…

Exactly. Putting health care in GDP also puts a positive light on rising health care costs -- and in the US there is nominally zero consumer power against rising health care costs. Most of the time it's impossible to know how much something will cost prior to the appointment, procedure, etc -- so people cannot "vote with their wallet" like they can with other spending.

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

#326

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #238
Retric wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First do you really think people will get more injured to game GDP? Anyway the metric is capacity to fulfill peoples wants. If the population has injuries then it will be less productive and therefore have a lower GDP. See the broken window fallacy.

> First do you really think people will get more injured to game GDP? I think politicians will be incentivized to adopt systems that underfund preventative care in favour of more expensive emergency care, and this has already happened. > Anyway the metric is capacity to fulfill peoples wants. If the population has injuries then it will be less productive and therefore have a lower GDP. Only to the extent that those i…

[deleted]

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

#327

Post by Retric »

Nullabillity wrote: post #176
Retric wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First do you really think people will get more injured to game GDP? Anyway the metric is capacity to fulfill peoples wants. If the population has injuries then it will be less productive and therefore have a lower GDP. See the broken window fallacy.

> First do you really think people will get more injured to game GDP? Death squads going out and punching people to get them into hospitals? Probably not. Lowering safety/emissions/etc standards in ways that both lead to increased immediate profit and (hopefully unintentionally) causes an increase in injuries over time? Absolutely.

There is a balance between worker safety and productivity. Even the CCP who cares about human rights about as much as a shark is still trying to reduce pollution to some degree because the current level is a net negative on GDP.

As such even your example is really about productivity not simply using healthcare to boost GDP.

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

#328

Post by koheripbal »

dendriti wrote: post #181
zsz wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Literacy rates in Western Europe and North America were quite high. There was an bustling trade in almanacs, pamphlets, periodicals and Bibles. Go read about Charles Dickens' career and how he succeeded by appealing to the tastes of the common man.

"quite high" but still horrible by today's standards.

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

#329

Post by eyelidlessness »

kortilla wrote: post #230
eyelidlessness wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not quibbling anything.

Yes, pointing out the delay representative democracy induces as proof that democracy doesn’t represent the will of the people is quibbling.

You must have misunderstood my comment. Only one of my examples might conceivably be delayed. One is explicitly being reversed, and the other is protection of a vulnerable group regardless of majority status. My point isn’t that democracy fails to represent the will of the people. Democracy is more complicated than that, in some ways more flawed and in some ways better.

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

#330

Post by MichaelZuo »

pksebben wrote: post #243
MichaelZuo wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People typically live for more than just a single issue. Averaged over many thousands of issues, some of which you end up enjoying benefits from and some of which you end up suffering penalties from, and after many years of residence, it does work out that way.

it might. It might, if we didn't split votes by district, then by county, then by state, and bundle them. It might if our representation weren't purposefully skewed to favor states with let populations. It might if there were runoff voting. It might if there weren't an electoral college, circumventing all that already miserable voting procedure. It might if voting we're a national holiday. It might if we had a choice…

Yes, the things you believe in are ostensibly 1/250000000th the importance of the sum total of what everyone in the U.S. believes in.

For example, if the 'political zeitgeist' your referring to is comprised of 50 million eligible voters, and if the other 200 million are fence sitters on believe in another 'zeitgeist', then it's in fact correct for the U.S. as a country to completely ignore the 50 million. i.e. to block it from having any effect on 'actual policy'.

After all, minority rights are only guaranteed up to the 3/4 threshold, after which a constitutional convention could do anything, such as reinstating slavery, prohibition, or even abolish the existing constitution and all laws passed by Congress entirely, etc...

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