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"GDP does not, and cannot, reflect the waste of enormous effort, and precious natural resources, that went into building something that suddenly no one wants." Yes, all of the malinvestment made GDP soar, but ultimately just wasted capital. As Frank Shostak explains, "The GDP framework cannot tell us whether final goods and services that were produced during a particular period of time are a reflection of real wealth expansion, or a reflection of capital consumption."

this is almost painfully obvious. Not to mention absolutely and completely irrelevant.

lets see.. the government gets judged based on statistics which they control.

its hard to see how anyone could possibly look bad in that case.
its also hard to see how those statistics would convey any useful data.

RE :”Not to mention absolutely and completely irrelevant.lets see.. the government gets judged based on statistics which they control. its hard to see how anyone could possibly look bad in that case.its also hard to see how those statistics would convey any useful data.”

Really? You should see the arguments I get from GWBush defenders. Cheney had said that ‘public debt is not a bad thing’ when they were running it up. So the Bush-bots would use the argument that it's the debt to GDP ratio that is the problem, and Bush-Cheney had high GDP(lots of borrowing, consuming and house building), until 2007 which they blame on Pelosi.

Tax revenue increased too. All those new government employees paid taxes. But net revenue was still negative.