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?? What about not using GDP as a primary indicator of economic/social health is making everyone poorer. GDP as a measure was invented as a wartime metric, at th
by cycomanic 4y ago
?? What about not using GDP as a primary indicator of economic/social health is making everyone poorer. GDP as a measure was invented as a wartime metric, at the time it made sense. However later even it's "inventor" Kuznets warned about it's use as primary metric. Let's not even get into the complexity of calculating it (the UN instructions come to >700 pages).
- astrange 4y agoGDP already isn't used as the only indicator of economic health (don't know about "primary"). But some British people invented a philosophy called degrowth as a way of explaining how their country's falling real incomes are good actually, and calling for it to be the official policy is pretty worrying. This is different from America, where people briefly got into degrowth after reading The Population Bomb, but mostly got it out of their system after noticing none of it actually came true. (Economic growth does not actually use more resources like the idea implies. That's not efficient since you have to pay for the resources. It uses the same ones more productively.)
- eecc 4y agoDoesn’t efficiency imply commoditization and therefore economic stagnation or even contraction?
- astrange 4y agoNo, productivity is good. For an example of the reverse, as the UK's economy has been shrinking in recent years, carwashes have been de-automating and replacing machines with handwashing. Luckily, humans are never satisfied and continue demanding new things, so making things cheaper doesn't reduce the total market. But also, those new things can be services or digital goods or 100% recycled, which is why the US uses less water per year and emits less CO2 per year in 2023 than it did in the 60s. (No, that's not because we outsourced it to China.)