Against Gross Domestic Product

If twenty-first-century America has an idol, a graven image we collectively worship, it is Gross Domestic Product. All discussion about the flourishing of our nation is reduced to GDP, and its increase seen as an ironclad refutation of any who question whether America is, in fact, flourishing. But GDP, as today calculated, is largely fake, disconnected from actual production of value. Worse, flourishing-as-quantity is a destructive way to view our society. It was once a commonplace that the value of very many things, a mother’s love or a scarlet sunset, was immense, but unmeasurable. We have forgotten this, to our detriment. To truly make America great again, a crucial first step is dethroning GDP as a measure of our greatness.

Yes, there is some benefit to having in our quiver of analytical tools an aggregate way to view additions to economic value, the production of new goods and services. Think of twenty men and women, who do nothing at all except eat and drink what is at hand. They produce no value; the GDP of their little society is zero. If, however, they begin to produce anything, goods or services, they produce value. How to measure such production has, however, generated different approaches, and the method we use today, while it serves our desire for simple ways of viewing the world, conceals truth in order to serve political ends. [This article first appeared in The American Mind; click to read the rest!]

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