WOULD a feudal king swap places with a present-day insurance clerk? The king has many palaces and armies of servants. But he is also a martyr to toothache. News reaches him slowly. His food is often stale. And he is bored of his courtiers. He might willingly trade his kingdom for life as an office drone in the 21st-century,with its dentistry, refrigeration, and Google and YouTube. The poser underlines the considerable fabric advances made in recent centuries. It also shows how tricky it is to compare living standards over time and across societies. Comparisons over recent decades are routinely made using GDP,but they are troublesome. Why is GDP a destitute degree of progress? Gross domestic product is a degree of output, income and spending all at the same time. In post-war Europe and America, or the growth in living standards and in GDP were synonymous. GDP growth became a target for politicians and a scorecard by which they were judged by voters. Even so,it has always had critics. Environmentalists have long lamented that GDP treats the plunder of the planet as something that adds to income, rather than being treated as an expense. A repeated...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com