Joseph Stiglitz : The GDP not a good measure of economic performance

Joseph Stiglitz : The GDP not a good measure of economic performance



Joseph Stiglitz : ...what we measure reflects what we do , if we measure the wrong things we'll do the wrong thing , if what we measure does not reflect our values what we think it is important we're doing the wrong things , so there've been a lot , a recognition that our system of GDP does not really reflect in many ways , is not a good measure of economic performance , let me just give you a couple of examples that were brought up by the crisis , GDP in the years before the crisis looked i the US like we are doing very well 46% of the profits were in the financial sector but those profits were just a made up number , a large fraction of the investment was in the real estate all based in public prices again not an accurate reflection what we were doing was not sustainable , that was not captured in the statistics while GDP per capita was going up most Americans were getting worse off , is that a good system ? if most people are worse off year after year even if GDP per capita was going up ? so what we thought it's important is at least to open up the discussion on say are our statistics really capturing what we think is important ....