When Simon Kuznets introduced the GDP metric to the US Congress back in the 1930s, he was careful to warn that it should never be used as a normal measure of economic progress. Focusing on GDP would incentivise too much destruction. ‘The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income,’ Kuznets said. ‘Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.’ A generation later, in 1968, the US politician Robert Kennedy conveyed this same message during a speech at the University of Kansas: ‘GDP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our
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