Topic: A Nobel-winning economist says it’s time to kill the GDP metrics - page 2. (Read 391 times)

They're not feeble-minded. Just pointing out that GDP is flawed and can be manipulated. We've only been obsessed with GDP since the 1960's - prior to that people had other methods of judging whether an economy was doing well. For example, if your tax rates stay steady from year to year, but tax receipts fall, then the economy is doing badly no matter what GDP says.

These problems are basically self-solving problems. People think that we should stop it before it is too late but it will stop even if it is too late, just not with humanity. For example, the world is going into a climate change right now right? Do you really think world will stop because all humans die?

That's not my reading of what he said. It's more about the fact that GDP doesn't reflect "the big picture": living standards, inequality, environmental issues. Only looking at GDP makes everything about achieving growth at any cost.

How would this be closing doors, ending opportunities?

I don't really get the point of this part of the quote, since those things are only factors that might potentially affect the economy and it isn't as though this is the first time in the history of economics that there's been severe unrest, disasters, and everything else happening.  There are always things going on that might affect a country's economy, but good luck trying to measure the impact before the effect happens.

So this is one economist blabbering on about some iconoclastic, paradigm-shifting lunacy.  The man probably deserves some respect for his accomplishments, but I trust the academic community will be the best judge of whether to listen to his suggestions, much like what happens in the scientific community.  There are well-known scientists who don't believe the HIV virus exists and have said as much, but that line of thinking hasn't exactly gone mainstream.  True knowledge will (hopefully) always prevail.

GDP is on the upswing, yet Los Angeles burns regularly, and the U.S. president faces impeachment.

It appears people of the world are too feeble minded and uneducated to understand GDP. And so the powers that be are calling for GDP numbers to become obsolescent, so that we feeble minded do not injure ourselves attempting to make sense of GDP.

This is strikingly similar to americans being denied access to ICOs, access to leveraged crypto based trading platforms like bitmex, crypto ETFs and other innovations. Everywhere throughout the world, opportunities and options are being denied to some demographics. Doors are being closed. What's the reason for this, do you support it? How do people interpret the motive behind these policies?

It appears people of the world are too feeble minded and uneducated to understand GDP. And so the powers that be are calling for GDP numbers to become obsolescent, so that we feeble minded do not injure ourselves attempting to make sense of GDP.

 

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz would like gross domestic product (GDP) to go the way of the pyramid inch and the Arabic mile. “The world is facing three existential crises: a climate crisis, an inequality crisis and a crisis in democracy,” he writes. “Yet the accepted ways by which we measure economic performance give absolutely no hint that we might be facing a problem.” He’s right! In the United States, GDP is on the upswing, yet Los Angeles burns regularly, and the U.S. president faces impeachment.

The problem, he says, is that politicians see positive GDP figures and continue with the status quo. GDP gives no hint of environmental degradation or resource depletion, nor inequality, middle-class suffering, or lower standards of living. “If growth is not sustainable because we are destroying the environment and using up scarce natural resources our statistics should warn us,” he says. “It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social performance.” Preach.

His new book, Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being, cowritten with French economists Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Martine Durand, provides a blueprint for how countries can use more appropriate metrics that account for details such as sustainability and—imagine!—how people feel about their lives.

This all began a decade ago, when Nicolas Sarkozy, then the president of France, asked Stiglitz and fellow Nobel winner Amartya Sen, along with Fitoussi, to set up a commission studying GDP. They published their early deliberations in a book called Mismeasuring Our Lives.

From an economist’s perspective, metrics are the key to everything. “If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing,” writes Stiglitz.


https://www.fastcompany.com/90435788/a-nobel-winning-economist-says-its-time-to-kill-the-gdp