Beyond GDP [audio]

Beyond GDP [audio](npr.org)

25 points by otp124 7 years ago | 8 comments

louwrentius 7 years ago |

I don't give a fuck about GDP. We should be guided by quality of life.

ur-whale 7 years ago | |

> We should be guided by quality of life.

Whatever that actually means. Your definition of quality of life is very likely not mine and conversely.

I'd be very afraid to have a statistics office define what "quality of life" means. It reeks of centralized planning.

vertex-four 7 years ago | | |

I mean, in nearly every country, there’s de facto already one that defines quality of life as being equivalent to engagement in any activity which increases the GDP of the country.

fareesh 7 years ago |

Without really addressing the substance of the article here:

It feels like everytime President Trump does something positively statistically significant, there is an effort by the left wing media to downplay its actual significance, and everytime there is an insignificant detail, gaffe or incident from decades past, there is an effort to turn it into a nationwide crisis.

Fox News did this with great success for 8 years. Disappointing to see others (whom I had regarded as worthy of more respect than an partisan hacks), to sink to this same level.

This narrative about GDP not really being a great indicator of anything coincides very conveniently with the reported GDP numbers that were previously touted as impossible by "experts".

I am quite confident that record (low) unemployment and GDP numbers like this under a Democratic President would not be framed in this manner.

dragonwriter 7 years ago | |

> This narrative about GDP not really being a great indicator of anything coincides very conveniently with the reported GDP numbers that were previously touted as impossible by "experts".

The narrative about GDP not really being a great indicator has been a constant refrain on the left since the statistics about stagnant wages even in the strong expansions periods of the 1980s became something of wide note by the early 1990s, and have been particularly strenuous since the poor distributional measures in the expansion after the 2001 recession (which has been repeated in subsequent expansions.)

> I am quite confident that record (low) unemployment and GDP numbers like this under a Democratic President would not be framed in this manner.

The better quarterly GDP growth rate numbers in the 2011 and 2014 peaks under Obama were, in fact, frequently framed this way (by the left), whereas the right dismissed the consistently declining unemployment rate through the whole Obama administration (while the left acknowledged it was real while minimizing it by arguing that declining unemployment wasn't sufficient to be happy about if it didn't drive broadening distribution of economic gains.)

Of course, if you think there is major left-wing media—especially economic left—in the US (and particularly if you think NPR is part of it, then your bigger problem is mistaking the dominant, neoliberal corporate-capitalist wing of the Democratic Party with the left.

sanxiyn 7 years ago | |

Agreed. GDP is an imperfect measure, but 2018 Q2 GDP growth figure (4.1%) is nothing short of amazing.

dragonwriter 7 years ago | | |

It would be amazing maintained over an extended period, but a brief 1-2 quarter peak at that level like in 2011 (1 @ 4.7%) or 2014 (2 @ 4.9%+) isn't that amazing, and some leading indicators (e.g., business spending) are already down.

And, since the end of the 2001 recession, even in good top-line growth periods, the distributional statistics have sucked compared to previous expansions.

icebraining 7 years ago | |

This narrative goes back to at least '68 [1]. I guess the Democratic Party was just way ahead of the curve in the fight against Trump.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/24/robert...