Emeritus Prof Christopher MayMar 18

Zack Polanski (Green Party of England & Wales) argues that GDP should be downgraded as a measure of political economic success; he is 'much more interested in growing people’s mental health, growing our public services, growing cohesion of our communities'....

While possibly a quixotic aim given the continuing centrality of GDP measure to political discourse, it *does* play to people's distrust of GDP as a plausible measure of their own economic experience(s).

#economics #politics
h/t FT

Show threadrob
@ChrisMayLA6 "people's distrust of GDP" - is it not actually objective experience, that for many people GPD does not measure their own circumstances due to increased inequality, which GDP takes no account of? That is to say, the issue is not that people don't trust GDP, it is that GDP is untrustworthy.
Mar 19 at 9:59amWeb
Show threadEmeritus Prof Christopher MayMar 19

@robparsons

No' I'd disagree; GDP is trust-worthy inasmuch as any economic metric can be trusted... the problem is how the data point is politically deployed.

The concept has clear rules about it should be calculated, it allows comparisons to be made... but its focus is quite narrow in social terms, but politicians & the media never allow for that & so it is criticised for something it couldn't be - which is why alternative measure may be better.

Show threadrobMar 19
@ChrisMayLA6 I was going to leave this because I feared we'd get into a morass of linguistic philosophy, but I couldn't help myself, so... While there is clearly a technical meaning in which the term "GDP" can be deemed trustworthy, that meaning is very rarely deployed. In common commentary the dominant meaning is GPD-has-gone-up-therefore-everybody-is-better-off, and that is so at odds with people's actual experience 1/2
Show threadrobMar 19
@ChrisMayLA6 2/2 (not their feelings about it, but their actual reality) that it is useless as a concept. You can argue whether "trust" is the right word to use; my point is that the benefits of growth in GDP are so unequally distributed that for most people it is a meaningless measure.
Show threadEmeritus Prof Christopher MayMar 19

@robparsons

Yes, I think we agree; as it is used in popular political discourse & media commentary, you are aright it bears little connection with loved experience - GDP per capita is a little better, but even then doesn't take distributional issues into account - so while we are expressing the argument in different ways I think we are *essentially* agreeing.