GDP bashers should think about how it strengthens democracy—often to the discomfort of politicians
· livemint.com
Critics of gross domestic product (GDP) point to how little it tells us about how people are actually faring. It overlooks inequality, for example. But politicians have a special reason to diss this statistic as a metric of progress—it catches them out.
By these standards, GDP may be the best statistic we’ve got. It does not capture everything that matters in an economy, but it is highly correlated with about...