> family B is better off, at least financially You got the numbers wrong; I said each family had two earners, and I said they made $125k each and $110k each, d

> family B is better off, at least financially You got the numbers wrong; I said each family had two earners, and I said they made $125k each and $110k each, deliberately setting up family A to have $230k after childcare and family B to have $220k. Both are clearly comfortable, but family B is apparently working less but at a higher effective hourly rate. With $10k/yr less, less work, and more time with their young child, I think many people would still say family B is coming out ahead. > GDP measures how much work is produced But that's not even true. It only seeks to track exchanges where money changed hands. If a childcare center closes and the parents care for their own kids, the same work can be done, but it's not included GDP. If I grow some of my own vegetables from seed which I otherwise might have bought from the grocery store, neither my labor nor the value I derive from that produce contributes to GDP. > nothing is wrong - the problem with framing it this way is the underlying assumption of equity of distribution of the increased wealth. Even without concerns about the income distribution, we know that what people actually value isn't just money, but GDP sums over transactions and ignores plenty of factors that may do as much or more for utility. Any time people choose to retire when they could keep working, or pick a career other than the one that would bring them the greatest expected income, they demonstrate that non-monetary factors can easily outweigh their profit-maximizing drive. But GDP doesn't attempt to measure those other factors. This sounds outlandish only because we've lived with this system for so long, but it would be entirely reasonable for the BLS or some other body to run monthly or quarterly surveys to get information on changes of those other factors, and though it would be imperfect, we could approach something that looked more like a utility function for real humans. How hard would it be to ask a decently large group of people regularly: - How satisfied are you with your health? Are you inhibited in doing the things you'd like by illness, injury, disability or aging? - How secure are you in your housing? In your access to health care? In your ability to feed yourself and your family? - How stressed are you? - How happy are you with your relationships with close friends or family? - Do you feel you have the time and resources to learn and grow in the ways that are important to you? - Do you regularly engage activities that support finding a flow state? - Do you find beauty in your environment? Etc etc. I won't pretend that I know all the questions to ask, or how scores for their answers should be weighted. But _something_ should try to measure, "Are we happy or satisfied in our lives?" and not just "What are we paid?". Kuznets introduced the modern form of G(D|N)P almost 90 years ago, and he recognized its shortcomings then, and I'm frankly disappointed that at some point we didn't get around to at least a serious attempt at replacing it with something better.