Twas the week before Christmas and the news was all barren. Out came Joseph Stiglitz with some views he was wearing. Oh hark oh Angel, may we contract? Does this mean I should take all of my presents back? Oh food stamps, oh foreclosure, how long must ye be bearing? On Geithner, on Summers, BLS, spin some stats! This ain't good news, can I have my taxes back?
The world’s largest economy isn’t likely to expand fast enough to create jobs for new entrants into the labor force or compensate for increases in productivity that will reduce demand for workers, Stiglitz told reporters in Singapore today.
We know you go home and stroke that GDP, salivating at the prospect of that magic number turning positive so you can deny all that is wrong with the economy...but Joseph Stiglitz just called you out:
Most governments make a fetish out of it. If you take one message out of our report, make it avoid GDP fetishism. The message is to encourage political leaders away from that.
So many things that are important to individuals are not included in GDP. There needs to be an array of numbers but we need to understand the role of each number. We may not be able to aggregate everything together.
The article cites examples, such as increased consumer debt contributing to GDP but not adding to economic output in reality.
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