I don't disagree that GDP fails to capture much that is important, and appears to count as positives things that are negative. However, is it true that the OJ

I don't disagree that GDP fails to capture much that is important, and appears to count as positives things that are negative. However, is it true that the OJ Simpson trial caused GDP to go up? It caused a lot of visible consumption, sure. But it's not at all clear that it grew the economy as a whole. In the absence of more money/resources flowing in (and from where?) all that expenditure was simply offsetting less expenditure someplace else. It's basically the Broken Window Fallacy. And some of that money which was burned uselessly in the OJ Simpson trial might indeed otherwise have been spent in ways that actually grow the economy. Conceivably, therefore, the OJ Simpson trial shrank GDP, precisely because it was not a productive activity. So while I appreciate Bryson's point, GDP is possibly still a better metric than intuition might lead you to believe.