At what real economic cost? GDP, we’ve discovered, is an accounting method that doesn’t account for climate change, for example. Maybe that doesn’t agree with

At what real economic cost? GDP, we’ve discovered, is an accounting method that doesn’t account for climate change, for example. Maybe that doesn’t agree with your politics. How about all the people harmed by China’s wars? What about its own victims, like victims of the Great Leap Forward? The latter happened within its borders, but that reduces the denominator. A one child policy reduces the denominator too. What would China’s population be today, its per capita GDP, if the denominator was larger? Fine, don’t angst about faked numbers. But do you seriously believe that the GDP per capita isn’t massively hacked to the benefit of the CPC? And even then, is the average Chinese still being below the American poverty line something to celebrate? Just because the number has grown doesn’t mean it would not have been higher in a free society.