Well you hit a point, that you can measure something like the GDP in dollars which is suppose to be a measure of economic production in an economy, but what it doesn't tell you is whether or not those dollars of product are something of value. They split it into three sections, consumer, government and investment. The consumer sector isn't necessarily consumed although it mostly is, the government section could be wasted dollars spent on needless paper shuffling or it could be an investment in some sort of infrastructure that gives years of returns. The investment section could be dollars spent on high return plants and equipment or wasted dollars spent on dead end technologies. Like you said it's subjective, what I might consider an addition, you might think of as a waste. Sometimes only time can tell which is which, subject to revisions.
What I do know is that the value that I create every day when I work makes me money, so for the purposes of saving for retirement, paying down debt, creating savings that is wealth creation for me personally. It also adds to that big pile of unknown called the GDP. Whether it adds to the collective "wealth" of the nation is anyone's guess. I tend to think that almost everything man made gives you one thing and takes something else away. One could easily argue that the automobile takes away as much as it gives.
That said, not all things are just a matter of moving the cake around from one plate to the other, sometimes it's a matter of creating a whole new cake which means that my ability to enjoy cake is not dependent on you getting less. |
