A good first approximation, surely. Money is a good proxy for consumption. Not true for leasing a fancy apartment, though, so you'll want to adjust it. The ide

A good first approximation, surely. Money is a good proxy for consumption. Not true for leasing a fancy apartment, though, so you'll want to adjust it. The idea that money you spend then gets spent by someone else on consumption and that you caused that is a little too hand-wavy for me. But I do suspect that a lot of the politically-correct consumption is not as great as it seems when you look deeper.