378K views · Sep 11, 2008 · 2:12 · 2 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2014–2020
A short video of Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 speech criticizing Gross Domestic Product as a measure of progress, saying it counts everything except what makes life worthwhile.
Why Hacker News points people here: Quoted in economics threads about growth, work and basic income as a classic critique of GDP.
“the best way to acknowledge that is to watch this speech from Robert F Kennedy”HN comment, 2020
“the best way to acknowledge that is to watch this speech from Robert F Kennedy”
Kennedy speech on how growth is measured
It depends. If it generate any kind of money exchange it counts to GDP. But there are many solutions that don't generate growth (like walking to work instead of using other means of transportation) The way we measure growth is nuts. the best way to acknowledge that is to watch this speech from Robert F Kennedy this video
“I can't say it better than Kennedy”
Kennedy on GDP's limits as a measure
I'd also be interested in effect on resource consumption. GDP isn't everything. I can't say it better than Kennedy: this video
RFK's famous critique of GNP
The problem with GDP per capita comparisons is that GDP is a bit of a weak measure of economic performance. It is a measure of raw, unadjusted economic throughput (cash flow, essentially), not necessarily a measure of economic performance. It is increased by an inefficient healthcare system (healthcare spending makes up 17.7% of the US GDP all on its own, while most of the affluent European countries are in the 9%-11% range), by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the United States' comparatively high energy usage per capita. See also RFK's famous quote one the GNP [1]. The reason why GDP is still used prominently as an economic indicator, while economists have been looking for better metrics, all those other metrics involve a fair amount of subjectivity. And GDP is still a pretty decent predictor of economic performance, despite its known weaknesses. But in the end, higher GDP does not necessarily translate into higher quality of life (of course, once the gap is large enough, it almost certainly does, at least for the average person, but we aren't talking orders of magnitude here). I don't think you'll see overall higher QoL in the US compared to Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, or France (the four OECD countries with the fewest hours worked per capita), regardless of where the GDP per capita is. [1] this video
Cited on why GDP is a poor progress measure
Although working fewer hours can mean more work (or at least a greater distribution of work), producing on a smaller scale is much more efficient than producing on a larger scale. This is due to Borsodi's law which states that as the cost of production decreases due to centralized operation, the cost of processing and distribution increases disproportionately [1]. For example, if a greenhouse produces one type of fruit for the entire continent, its production costs are low but distribution costs will be much higher e.g. the costs of transporting the fertilizer to the site, and those of transporting the goods as well as cooling, packaging, marketing.These distribution costs will be much higher than in several decentralised small-scale regenerative agriculture productions. All waste on gasoline, packaging and fertilizer (much of it synthetic) enters in the GDP. In fact the GDP is not a good measure of progress at all and this discourse to clarify why [2] At the moment in developed countries you have 2% of the population working in agriculture and 40% in distribution. Even if you increase the number of jobs in agriculture (for example to 10%) this would mean a fairly large reduction in employment in distribution. We have to solve our social and environmental problems even if it does not provide jobs. Employment is a means to an end and not the end in itself.Previous generations created infrastructure unimaginable 100 years ago and that is the reason why there is no employment. T
