GDP is useful for tracking the general direction of travel of the output of an economy, and is usually correlated with other important things such as the level of employment and overall tax receipts, but be wary of it as a measure of welfare (see Chapter 10). For example, its measurement has recently been extended to include prostitution and drug trafficking, and these dubious contributions will now be deemed to have boosted GDP by between £7 billion and £11 billion, whereas the wholly praiseworthy contribution of somewhere between 1.7 and 2.1 billion hours of extra help each year provided by
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