Terrifying/Inspiring Thought of the Week

Photo courtesy of Investopedia

In the 1930s, the economist Simon Kuznets was commissioned by the US Department of Commerce to come up with better economic metrics for measuring the economy than those that were in use at the time. Kuznets came up with gross domestic product (GDP). Gross domestic product simply measures everything produced in an economy. More formally, GDP is defined as:

The total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific period.

In 1937, Kuznets presented his model to Congress. This eventually led to the GDP metric we use today, which is the goal of the government of everyone reading this post. Kuznets warned that his newly created measure shouldn’t be used as an instrument of social policy or to judge a society’s well-being.

Oops.