Why GDP is a worthless measure of economic output
(media.scored.co)
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More accurately, if the man were to buy the woman that handbag and donate it to her in hopes she, I dunno, opens it on one of her live streams? The end effect is the exact same: The man is out 500 bucks, the woman has a 500 dollar handbag, but now the GDP and the economy is down 500 bucks.
Even though NOTHING happened differently.
I could set up a computer with overclocked RAM that just used its full processing power to buy "buy 10 dollars" services from another computer of the same, whose job is to "buy 10 dollars" from the first. It's a 10 dollar expense each time it does it too, which comes off the revenue, so no tax dollars are made, but record it down, and the GDP of the country is now infinite. I can "set" GDP to whatever I would like it to be using two numbered shell corporations.
Exactly. I was trying to get at that point but you explained it better!
Even though the exact same thing happened, GDP in one scenario is double GDP in the other. That means GDP is 100% worthless.
Well, buying the bag and sending it to her isn't exactly the same. If the man doesn't make a donation, the web services don't get a cut!