{"id":407,"date":"2005-11-17T16:47:57","date_gmt":"2005-11-17T05:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/2005\/11\/17\/more-on-the-gdp\/"},"modified":"2005-11-17T01:13:06","modified_gmt":"2005-11-16T19:43:06","slug":"more-on-the-gdp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200511\/more-on-the-gdp\/","title":{"rendered":"More on the GDP"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time The Examined Life<\/i> covered<\/a> Dilip’s experiments with the GDP<\/a>, I noted that he was making a plausible sounding, but incorrect point. Now he has gone and made another post<\/a>, and this time he makes two points, one plausible, but still incorrect, and the other so baffling that only the use of big big words saves it from being identified as self-evidently absurd.
\n
\nFirst, the plausible, but incorrect point, which is the familiar claim that measuring the GDP does not take into account environmental degradation. I think I have already answered it when I said that the absolute GDP may not, but the GDP growth certainly does. But let me explain the dispute with an example which makes my point clearer. <\/p>\n

Suppose that you are a farmer who does not care for the environment. You do a lot of bad things. Your farming erodes nutrients from the soil. You deplete the water table, etc. Your actions may get you a bumper crop this year and that will increase the GDP. But sooner or later, this depletion will show up in the GDP won’t it? <\/p>\n

Yes it will, but how soon or how late? That is the crux of the disagreement between environmentalists and economists. Environmentalists think that the depletion will not show up till one day it is too late. Economists think that the problems will show up next year, in increased price or lower production. If the environmentalists are right, then the farmer will merrily draw water from the ground, depleting the water table, but increasing production, till some day poof! It’s all over. If the economists are right, then the problems will gradually increase, and people will start preparing for them and countering them. <\/p>\n

So the economist’s point will be that a) there is no way you can get sustained GDP growth by screwing up the environment (The key word is “sustained”.) and b) As the GDP increases, people become more aware of environmental problems and they have the resources to fix them. You might disagree, you might say that we are still sitting on a time bomb. But the facts are on the economists’ side, I am afraid. Atleast the first point is a plausible disagreement over facts, unlike the second point. <\/p>\n

The second point is bizarre. He is in effect saying that the US produces cars, not because the Americans want cars, but because car production gets added to the GDP. If you think that is a sensible point, I am afraid there is nothing I can do to help you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time The Examined Life covered Dilip’s experiments with the GDP, I noted that he was making a plausible sounding, but incorrect point. Now he has gone and made another post, and this time he makes two points, one plausible, but still incorrect, and the other so baffling that only the use of big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}