Summary
Gross domestic product; questionable whether economic growth is inherently good
Economic growth is generally understood to be a positive thing, but in calculating the gross domestic product the consequences of growth are not taken into account. US citizens, for instance, are getting fatter as are encouraged to buy more food, which in turns leads people to spend money on health spas to loose the flab. While the economy grows as a result, it is questionable whether it is a good or bad thing.See the full content of this document
Extract
The GDP Myth.
Why "growth" isn't always a good thing
George Orwell really did see it coming. "As soon as certain topics are raised," he wrote, "the concrete melts into the abstract." Nowhere does it melt more quickly than in economics. Public discussion of the economy is a hothouse of evasive abstraction. Opinionators and politicians rarely name what they are talking about. Instead they waft into generalities they learned in Economics 101. The President's State of the Union Address was a case in point. The President boasted of the "longest peacetime expansion of our history." That's how pols always talk. It sounds like truly wonderful news. But what actually has been expanding? A lot of things can grow, and do. Waistlines grow. Medical bills grow. Traffic, debt, and stress all grow. We can't know whether an "expansion" is good or not unless we know what it includes. Yet the President didn't tell, and the media homes didn't ask, which was typical too. A human economy is supposed to advance well-being. That is elementary. Yet politicians and pundits rarely talk about it in those terms. Instead they revert to the language of "expansion," "g...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
