Eventually, I do think we should start moving away from GDP as a primary metric of a country’s performance. Things like life expectancy, access to transportation, fewer working hours, gender equality, etc. matter a lot more to people living there once GDP per capita reaches a certain point. But Japan isn’t really trying to do those either.
One of the big flaws I’ve seen for myself with GDP is that is doesn’t account for wealth that is being siphoned out. So, you can have country have a relatively high GDP due to western investors and tourists coming in and driving up spending numbers, while still being dirt poor because all that money being funneled straight back out via trade imbalances, asset takeovers, corruption etc.
doesn’t matter how you try to juice it China’s gonna keep winning
The UK has very high GDP despite its economy being a blackout away from bascially nil.
GDP also counts bullshit things like “financial services” and “imputed rent”.
fewer working hours
Yeah, Japan is not winning on that one either…
Eventually, I do think we should start moving away from GDP
This is my hope, since a few ultrawealthy individuals and multinational corporate conglomerates can heavily weight GDP. One individual or family can be subsisting at or below a couple of currency units per day, starving, sick, unhomed or homed, while another individual has a net worth of several hundred billions.
Neoliberalism will work eventually just keep trying it!
A lot of that can be blamed on them bowing to usa’s demand that they recalculate the value of their currency. (the same thing they are trying to pressure China to do)
That played a part for sure, but the scale of the stagnation is too large to be purely monetary/financial. It has deeper underlying systemic causes in the way the economy works.
Wait, you mean end stage capitalism with mass child prositution as an industry does not boost the economy? Huh! /jk
There was no grace to fall from
(Jest aside, it shows that scientific socialism just works)
