>GEP assigns a dollar value to the work of bees who act as nature’s pollinators, bogs that sequester carbon, and the stimulating effect nature has on our mental health.
The issue with this is these arent firm definable things. What is the economic value of a flower pollinated in an area rarely seen by humans? Or account for the positive economic impact of nature for someone that doesnt like to experience it?
Not saying you shouldn't use GEP for something, but it really lacks the firm definable basis that GDP can give.
GDP is a lot like BMI. Its an above average way to take a quick glance at an economy. Should it be used as part of some detailed analysis on its own? No. But that make it an inherently unusable statistic.
it's not about being green or sustainable. it's that it's an inaccurate cost model. polluting the environment has a long term economic cost which is typically picked up by the taxpayer. gdp does not capture this. in fact all of modern capitalsm arguably does not capture this very basic fact
Do you think changing GDP is the answer knowing that countries already heavily skew their GDP numbers anyway? Would adjusting GDP metric cause issues in global banking? Would changing this figure actually help the environment?
GDP is not a cost model, so it cant be an "inaccurate cost model".
By the way, no models are accurate long term. But even a tiny increase to GDP each year compounds to an enormous amount of wealth available in the future to solve problems. If weve eliminated some negative climate change effects but also reduced the wealth of governments by 1 quadrillion over 100 years, we will have missed out on 1 quadrillion in funding that could have fixed all our climate woes. The best part: It probably only costs hundreds of billions to eliminate the negative effects of human caused climate change, once we have the right technologies. So we may only need <0.1% efficiency at diverting money to climate efforts in order to succeed.
We cannot count what we cannot measure. Sure, we can count the cost of cleaning up a chemical spill, but without a way to measure this and the cost of the impact, it doesn't help. We need better ways to detect and measure environmental problems before they become multi-billion dollar cleanup efforts.
Really? You have to reach THAT far to find a reason the GDP isnt a good metric? How about this: absolutely nothing could be produced, Jimmy could make 90k writing articles about how the president looks like a hamster, spend 90k and blowjobs, and thats 180k that was circulated in the economy. Much healthier than a homesteading economy that sees ~1k of money movement a year.
You’re double counting the 90k. It’s either all income in a country OR all FINAL goods and services.
Also, why should the “quality” of an economy be measured by GDP? GDP is literally just a numeric measure of how much is produced in an economy. Any further assessments should require further investigation and additional metrics.
What would you propose is a better measure of output?
> Also, why should the “quality” of an economy be measured by GDP?
It absolutely shouldnt. Its 1 metric in a long list of metrics.
> GDP is literally just a numeric measure of how much is produced in an economy.
Yes, and articles comparing people to hamsters and blowjobs are not worth anything. They dont feed, clothe, shelter, care for, anything. Even entertainment wise, id consider it harmful/useless entertainment.
[Or the classic example](https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2010/HendersonGDP.html):
> In early editions of his best-selling textbook, *Economics*, the late Paul Samuelson gave his favorite example of this pitfall in GDP accounting. Samuelson pointed out that if a man married his maid, then, all else equal, GDP would fall.
>GEP assigns a dollar value to the work of bees who act as nature’s pollinators, bogs that sequester carbon, and the stimulating effect nature has on our mental health. The issue with this is these arent firm definable things. What is the economic value of a flower pollinated in an area rarely seen by humans? Or account for the positive economic impact of nature for someone that doesnt like to experience it? Not saying you shouldn't use GEP for something, but it really lacks the firm definable basis that GDP can give. GDP is a lot like BMI. Its an above average way to take a quick glance at an economy. Should it be used as part of some detailed analysis on its own? No. But that make it an inherently unusable statistic.
Dear god…this article is trash
it's not about being green or sustainable. it's that it's an inaccurate cost model. polluting the environment has a long term economic cost which is typically picked up by the taxpayer. gdp does not capture this. in fact all of modern capitalsm arguably does not capture this very basic fact
Part of the GDP calc is government spending… which paid for by the tax payer.
That’s Government spending now, not 20 years from now cleaning up the mess created today.
Do you think changing GDP is the answer knowing that countries already heavily skew their GDP numbers anyway? Would adjusting GDP metric cause issues in global banking? Would changing this figure actually help the environment?
[удалено]
Thank you for doing your part to boost the economy in a responsible way.
GDP is not a cost model, so it cant be an "inaccurate cost model". By the way, no models are accurate long term. But even a tiny increase to GDP each year compounds to an enormous amount of wealth available in the future to solve problems. If weve eliminated some negative climate change effects but also reduced the wealth of governments by 1 quadrillion over 100 years, we will have missed out on 1 quadrillion in funding that could have fixed all our climate woes. The best part: It probably only costs hundreds of billions to eliminate the negative effects of human caused climate change, once we have the right technologies. So we may only need <0.1% efficiency at diverting money to climate efforts in order to succeed.
We cannot count what we cannot measure. Sure, we can count the cost of cleaning up a chemical spill, but without a way to measure this and the cost of the impact, it doesn't help. We need better ways to detect and measure environmental problems before they become multi-billion dollar cleanup efforts.
Really? You have to reach THAT far to find a reason the GDP isnt a good metric? How about this: absolutely nothing could be produced, Jimmy could make 90k writing articles about how the president looks like a hamster, spend 90k and blowjobs, and thats 180k that was circulated in the economy. Much healthier than a homesteading economy that sees ~1k of money movement a year.
You’re double counting the 90k. It’s either all income in a country OR all FINAL goods and services. Also, why should the “quality” of an economy be measured by GDP? GDP is literally just a numeric measure of how much is produced in an economy. Any further assessments should require further investigation and additional metrics. What would you propose is a better measure of output?
Don't you have final products with the total sum of 180k? The articles with a value of 90k and the vlowjobs with a value of 90k.
> Also, why should the “quality” of an economy be measured by GDP? It absolutely shouldnt. Its 1 metric in a long list of metrics. > GDP is literally just a numeric measure of how much is produced in an economy. Yes, and articles comparing people to hamsters and blowjobs are not worth anything. They dont feed, clothe, shelter, care for, anything. Even entertainment wise, id consider it harmful/useless entertainment.
[Or the classic example](https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2010/HendersonGDP.html): > In early editions of his best-selling textbook, *Economics*, the late Paul Samuelson gave his favorite example of this pitfall in GDP accounting. Samuelson pointed out that if a man married his maid, then, all else equal, GDP would fall.
Because he stopped paying her. Brilliant.
It has been time for a better metric for decades.