GDP is a measure of the marketisation of society. If I go visit my grandma over the weekend, my activities do not register on GDP. If I hire a care assistant for $800 per day to do so, that's $800 to national GDP. The encroachment of the market into society correlates with record levels of mental and physical health crisis. US life expectancy has declined over the past three years, even as 'the economy' has surged ah…
The problem is that countries who don't want to compete on the marketisation of everything will lose out eventually. In your example of elderly care, an extended family in Italy may care for their own grandmother (and they'd probably live longer). But the market in Italy isn't so bouyont so the younger generation can't get high paying jobs and move out even if they wanted to. The high spending and marketisation in th…
It goes both ways though, when shit hits the fan if your economy is based on airbnb and food delivery you're fucked.
Look at Russia, half the GDP of Germany but twice the steel production, 4 times the wheat production, 1st producer of fertilizer, huge amount of gas, &c. They had roughly the same military budget as Germany in 2020, yet the german army virtually doesn't exist.
It depends if you think our current mass productivism/consumerism practices are a bubble or the end game of humanity, history seems to prove that it goes in cycle of good and bad times. Poor countries would probably even fare better than most in case of major events, the bigger they are the harder they fall.