Saltpetre, the most accurate formula could indeed be quite complex. I don’t really feel able to delve into it too much, suffice to say that you would have a better idea than me of what all the various factors are and how they compare in significance.

But we’d definitely want some measure of how increasing population growth makes it progressively harder for our mining and agricultural sectors to meet the demand, both for domestic needs and for profits from export income, and how we need a progressively better rate of value-adding and technological improvement to make the same gains.

In short; a GDP formula that gives a good measure of economic prosperity for the twelve months just gone would not be a good measure for the longer term if it doesn’t take into account the ever-increasing pressures placed on our economy by population growth.

It would not be good enough to just look at the per-capita GDP in the short term. The right formula would have to take into account the ever-increasing demand for everything, compared to our ability to uphold supply.

TO/REQUOTE......<<...We have devised a measurement
of the volume/of economic activity,>>

LOL..KEY-WURDS..;..'devised'/volume*..[in doolar value]
SO HOW Come we measuring/total/gross\amount..;expenditure/in-toto..?

ITS NOT VOLUME/its gross expenditure
its a faulse name/wrong definition/defining the wrong/thing[volume/may relate''to/the quantity/spending?

w have so many debates/here/re wHAT WORDS/MEAN\'';HERE IS A CLassic egsample..money expended/rather than..volume'..

<<>and use it to measure......our economic progress.>>

INTERESTING..ONLY THE USE OR PROGRESS/[NOT RECEEDING?]

<< More[VOLUME].is better, less..[VOLUME]..is worse.
<<>You have this entrenched,..but erroneous belief..that the money used*..by doctors and nurses shouldn't be measured,....simply because they look/after the sick...>>

NO/BECAUSE..ITS REPARING A NEGATIVE/adverse event correction/increases volume/of negative eco/activity.

its this bull/spin;volume\rather that normalised/meaning defining/WHATS BEING pro-moted*

<<Or the houses rebuilt after a bushfire..don't really count as economic activity,.because they are replacing something that was there before...>>

IF YOUR MEASURING/THE WORTH/of things
you measure the value/there was a book-value/re house/land
its merely being restored[if its improved/its because/it takes money from ann/to give t paul

..[money transphere..is this eco/activity?
how about flash trading/that trades 1000 times a minute?

volume/wtf

<<How do you deal with situations such as this non-bushfire-related activity?>>

i would carefully dismantle/it..clean everything.in it/have a good look at the BARE/b0nes of it/and/its\value/where-is/by auction/ignoring the insanity/duplicity.of those building in the bush...[in the bush/forbid future building..in that material]

i would advise the property/insured/just like smoking\they didnt declare they too no fire precautions.thus are on their own
'

im=,=minded/of the many 'fires'/that burnt down many hotels[outback]
3 i knOw of in longreach/ALONE..oh dear my hotel burnt down/oh well good thing its insured/i will rebuild it/cause fires attract tourists

[i stayed in the last.'old-one'..the only one in the whole hotel
i could just feel the fire comming on\so i moved on..trouble is gdp/is fake..because it dont go up or down/its so averaged out axccross time as to currently jusat be a feel good/..its up\let the good tmes role

its down..get govt to bail-us out/or burn it down.

<<.between voluntary and involuntary rebuilding?>>
honesty/yet;.regardless..a rebuild=is=a rebuild/of what\was
its like one step up/one step down[but somewhere;.some insurance underwriting sceme/lost its bet/no new money/no new value/plenty of volume/lol

<<.Should..neither be included..in /GDP?>
rebuilds are nett loss.[payed-out]
[regardless of the gain/pay-off pays for.

<<how do you account for the purchase/creation..of building materials>>

thats eco/activity/just like loss is tax deductable
'wind-fall/

<<.the wages. of the builders etc.>>

we have income/tax.;not wage tax
corperations/fees/fines/intrest capital-gain=income
the living earn wage/WE HAVE NO WAGE TAX/WE HAVE in-come/tax..

><<in your version of GDP?>>>>
the loss incured by the insurance=NEGATIVE*
GDP/MINUS INSURANCE/OR REBULDING/OR REPAIR PAYOUT
make rebuilding better/pay more/we used to asses death/taxes
we all know if this is new activity/or theft[when govt bail-in cash/will that be eco-activity..on our gdp?.[such a big change/will go unoted/on gdp?

That was not a personal observation, Ludwig.

>>That’s not nice, Pericles<<

It was a reference to the misunderstandings that seem to cling to you, no matter how much evidence is presented to refute them, nor how little actual evidence you offer that supports them.

But we soldier on, in the cause of enlightenment and (eventual) understanding.

>Blind to the reality that not all economic activity equates to economic progress!<<

It depends of course on your definition of economic progress. Which is unlikely to be measurable in any useful manner, since it will be uniquely and idiosyncratically yours. In GDP we have a neutral, non-judgmental measurement of aggregate economic activity.

You can trace it back to Adam, in fact:

"The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nation".

That's Adam Smith, of course, describing (essentially) the concept of GDP in the opening sentence of "The Wealth of Nations". His next sentence then describes per capita GDP:

"According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniencies for which it has occasion."

I can highly recommend it as background reading for you, as it essentially takes you back to first principles.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm

Wikipedia describes it as follows:

"First published in 1776, the book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth and is today a fundamental work in classical economics".

You don't have to read all five volumes, of course. Just work through the introduction, let me know which parts you find fault with, and we can move on from there.

<< It was a reference to the misunderstandings that seem to cling to you, no matter how much evidence is presented to refute them, nor how little actual evidence you offer that supports them. >>

Right back atcha with that, Pericles.

<< But we soldier on, in the cause of enlightenment and (eventual) understanding. >>

And likewise with that!

One of these days, you will see the light……………………………………………maybe. ( :>/

I wrote:

>> Blind to the reality that not all economic activity equates to economic progress! <<

You replied:

<< It depends of course on your definition of economic progress... >>

Well, at least you haven’t just come back and just reasserted that all growth is good and less is worse!

Of course it depends on definitions. And by any meaningful definitions, there is a BIG difference between all economic growth and real economic progress.

<< …Which is unlikely to be measurable in any useful manner… >>

What?

It obvious CAN be measured in a useful manner, just as all the various indicators related to the economy are useful, despite difficulties with actually defining the parameters.

You seem to be falling back on a fundamental fallacy – that because the good and progressive fraction of economic growth is difficult to separate from the neutral or recovery-phase or duplication-of-everything-to-keep-up-with-population-growth type of economic activity, then we should just simply count it all as good!

That’s wonky thinking at its best!!

Without reading ‘The Wealth of Nations’, I can surmise that its great flaw is directly equal to the criticisms that I have leveled against the simplistic view of economic growth and the GDP concept on this long thread.

continued

Pericles, you continue to dodge around the elephant in the living room. Or should I say; elephants.

Things like continuous rapid population growth, along with a whole lot of obviously non-prosperity-producing economic activity that gets counted as good economic growth to exactly the same extent as genuinely good economic growth that has arisen from technological advances and which is directly advancing our average quality of life, national prosperity and future wellbeing.

And other things like the amount of non-renewable resources that we have and the rate of draw-down on them…. and all the increasing stresses on our environment and on the national budget... etc, etc.

In short, you are a million miles away from seeing the REALITY of the situation.

No offence, but you really do have the blinkers on. so much so that you must barely be able to see past them at all!

What’s the point in trying to educate me on the basics of economic growth? All that you are doing there is demonstrating very clearly to me that you are just totally entrenched in the conventional mindset and just not at all open to what I am saying and thus developing a realistic and holistic understanding of what is really happening with our national economy, and what it really means for us in terms of quality of life, prosperity and sustainability.