Oh dear Pericles, you and I have indeed gone over this GDP discussion at length just recently. And at the end of it we remained poles apart in our opinions.

For goodness sake it really is as clear as day that all sorts of negative things get added to GDP.

A very big thing, which is +/-neutral in the short term but strongly negative in the long term, appears as a very big plus according to our GDP indicator. This thing is our very high immigration rate.

It boosts GDP enormously, and yet the economic activity generated by it is predominantly the massive duplication of infrastructure and services, which is needed to provide the same standard of living for them as for the established population, with no net gain for established citizenry or for the country… and no net improvement in our current economic wellbeing or future economic outlook.

Fires, cyclones, illnesses, car accidents, droughts, obesity, and a thousand other bad things, have a negative effect on productivity. Of course as a result of these, GDP would be lower than it would otherwise be.

And yet all the economic activity generated by these bad things, which is just countering or repairing the damage and not at all improving the pre-damage economic situation, gets ADDED to GDP and made out to be totally positive in terms of economic prosperity.

It absolutely SHOULDN’T be! It should be left out of the GDP calculation, or perhaps be subtracted from the total.

continued

longing for a return to "white" Australia.
Nhoj,
So, you're racist as well ? Gawd you're really some specimen, you'd confuse old Charlie Darwin. I wouldn't describe you as the missing link but you for sure are a shackle pin.

<< GDP contains neither negative nor positive components >>

CORRECT Pericles. Economic activity which genuinely indicates economic advancement, improving prosperity and increasing standard of living and quality of life, gets lumped with stuff which doesn’t indicate anything of the sort…. and it is all held up as being of the same value!! If it is a big total is it positive, or negative if it ain’t so big!!

This is extremely serious stuff. It is economics 101 – only the good stuff should get counted as a positive thing!

Successive Federal treasurers, of both political idiologies (ologies of idiots) completely fail to understand this.

So how can Hockey or Bowen or the Libs or Labs possibly ever get us to a balanced budget, let alone one which will take us progressively out of debt and into surplus, for as long as they believe that ALL economic growth (most significantly that generated by high immigration) is a good thing and only a good thing??

As if their manic pandering to ONLY the supply side of the equation, without ever even bearing a thought for addressing the demand side, wasn’t bad enough, this adding of neutral and negative economic activity to the positive side of the ledger is just the pits!

We’ll look back on it in a couple of decades, when we have got our collective headspace entrenched in the imperative of achieving a sustainable society, and wonder how we could have ever been so utterly STERYUUUPID as to have had such a thing as GDP, as it is now calculated, sitting right at the core of our economic system!!

Ludwig the full quote (which you "conveniently" shortened) was, "You're just an old man longing for a return to "white" Australia". And it was directed at *YOU*.

Yep, Ludwig = a 100% racist, who fears dark skinned people from cultures other than "white" cultures. Ludwig is the classic definition of a racist.

Oops, I'm so sorry Ludwig. My post was about "Individual".

OK let's get back on topic. This thread is about the Coalition's doubling of the deficit.

So far, none of the righties here have been able to successfully refute the "fact" that the Coalition, in just 7 short months, has doubled the deficit. They've offered their usual "excuses" and "explanations", but have been 100% unsuccessful in refuting the "fact" that the deficit has DOUBLED.