Mental illness, obesity, pollution, crime – in terms of the GDP, the more the better. That’s also why the country with the planet’s highest per capita GDP, the United States, also leads in social problems. “By the standard of the GDP,” says the writer Jonathan Rowe, “the worst families in America are those that actually function as families – that cook their own meals, take walks after dinner and talk together instead of just farming the kids out to the commercial culture.”13
