Saturday, January 09, 2010

GDP: friend or foe?

I attended the British Association for the Advancement of Science Conference in Birmingham in 1977, and even then economists were asking whether GDP was a useful measure. The example I remember was eating more sweets and consequently visiting the dentist more often.

Should we be quite so concerned about goosing GDP with quantitative easing etc, or is it just a trap to make us continue misallocating resources?

8 comments:

  1. James Higham9 January 2010 at 20:57

    Advancement of science eh? Does it need it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AntiCitizenOne10 January 2010 at 02:30

    Change in GDP - Change in Debt.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sackerson10 January 2010 at 07:50

    James - yes, or we'd still be hacking flints and shivering.

    ACO - quite, wish the Treasury and BoE and FSA agreed. Though that doesn't address the sweets-and-dentist thing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Paddington10 January 2010 at 18:42

    Sackerson - if only we could get our leaders and the populace to understand what you said in your comment.

    ReplyDelete
  5. uni-talian11 January 2010 at 18:50

    I didn't realise you were so old! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sackerson11 January 2010 at 20:50

    Inside, there is no age.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Paddington12 January 2010 at 01:22

    "Sackerson said... Inside, there is no age."

    Either Confucius, or the wrapper on a Twinkie (non-US residents look that up).

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sackerson12 January 2010 at 06:09

    I categorically deny that I am a Twinkie.

    ReplyDelete

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