Delete comment from: Captain Capitalism
I never liked GDP since it adds things together but does not do a good job in subtraction. For example when a hurricane comes ashore lots of damage occurs and so lots of spending and building happens so it looks like a boom in GDP but does not take into account all the damage.
It also does not take into account the quality of the spending, if we buy a bunch of over priced, badly designed and unneeded bridges or tanks or cell phones for poor people is this GDP increase really good for the economy?
Finally it does not do a very good at taking into account debt, both present debt, future debt that today’s spending will cause such as subsidies for high speed rail, or debt fueled future inflation
Jan 20, 2014, 1:23:04 AM