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Evaluating The Economy By More
Than The GDP (*Gross Domestic Product)
August 3rd 2025
“People lie, numbers don’t.”
–Sean Carter, Sean Hannity, I don’t even know anymore.
And while those word's rang true throughout the early 1990’s... today’s music industry is dominated by fake statistic's and invalid sale's quotas. Nevertheless, while the mockery of the US economy known as, “hip hop,” has always been a sore spot for bull market enthusiast's, today the macro-economy of any given country is typically judged by the metric entitled, “gross domestic product,” or, “GDP.” Wikipedia further defines Gross Domestic Product as;
“Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or country's.”
So every country has an established, “output,” of goods and services, year after year, and the evaluation of each country’s, “yearly GDP,” is typically judged by the EXPECTATION of a 2.5% gain in, “year to year production,” or national output of goods and services. Or rather every country is EXPECTED to grow by 2.5% every year financially, in terms of GDP output. Nevertheless, and while some country’s economies hardly ever grow at all, GDP is still the most used indicator of economic strength throughout most national economic publication’s as well as; the world economic forum, NATO, the EU and The US Treasury.
But should GDP be the main indicator of a country's economic, “health?”
Changes
And only recently has this subject even been broached by the mainstream media where in previous decades journalist’s seemingly just accepted the GDP metric as, “all telling,” of the macro-economic tides. Most notably Vaclav Smil writes in his book GROWTH (2019);
“Common variables that the economist’s want to see growing include the total industrial output, GDP, disposable income, labor productivity, exports, trade surplus, labor force participation (*unemployment) and total employment. Affluence (GDP, gross earnings, disposable income, accumulated wealth) is commonely measured in per capita terms, while the quality of life is assessed by combinations of socioeconomic variables. For example, the Human Development Index (HDI, developed and annually recalculated by the United Nations Development Programme) is composed of three indices quantifying life expectancy, educational level, and income (UNDP 2016).
And in 2017 the World Economic Forum introduced a new Inclusive Development Index (IDI) based on a set of key performance indicators that allow a multidimensional assessment of living standards not only according to their current level of development but also taking into account the recent performance over 5 years…
Perhaps the most interesting addition to this new accounting has been the quantifications of happiness or satisfaction with life.
Small Himalayan Bhutan made news in 1972 when Jigme Singye Wang-chuck, the nation’s fourth King, proposed to measure the kingdom’s progress by using the index of Gross National Happiness (GNH).”
-Vaclav Smil, Growth (2019)
And continuing in that light… nutrition, health, exercise, the availability of modern medicine, water quality, air quality and crime rates, could also be used to measure the greater, “economy,” and the politician’s who control it… versus the modern system of GDP or Gross Domestic Product.
In conclusion, I'd also like to discuss 2 statistic’s that especially appeal to me in judging both politician’s and the greater economy, the murder rate and the suicide rate. Why are the suicide rate's and murder rate’s never connected to downturns in the US economy? Surely the national economy is the biggest factor when it comes to suicide and murder statistic’s, so why are these statistics not currently linked to any progress report or mainstream judgment of the greater economy or the politician’s and CEO’s who run it?
-William Larsen, Founder, Civilians News