December 04, 2003
How Well Are We Doing?
New York Times, 4 December 2003, Letter to the Editor, p. A-38.
To the Editor:
I would like to add one more statistic to your "Index of Missing Economic Indicators" (Op-Ed, Nov. 30 ["The Productivity Paradox" and "The Unemployment Myth"]): a true welfare measure. Gross domestic product and its cousin gross national product have long been used as proxies for how well we are doing as a nation, even though they had never been intended for this purpose.
Gross domestic product per capita is a good proxy for economic prowess, but as long as environmental degradation, increased military budgets and other "defensive expenditures" add dollars to the gross domestic product, equating it with societal well-being is woefully misleading.
Gernot Wagner
Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 30, 2003
Posted by Gernot Wagner on Thursday, December 04, 2003.