Description
GDP is the sum of all income earned in a country during a year. Alternatively, it can be thought of as the value of all production in an economy during a year. But do income and production measure happiness? The way we measure GDP can both overstate and understate people’s happiness and well-being. It understates economic activity and well-being when it doesn’t take into account production that is not exchanged in a market (grandma providing free baby-sitting) and leisure time. It overstates well-being when two otherwise identical activities are measured the same even though one produces more pollution.Start your discussion by responding to these questions:Should we continue to measure GDP as we do now? After all, the current way of measurement has been used over time, so we can make historical comparisons.Are there problems with GDP that should be fixed? If you don’t think GDP should be changed, explain your reasoning. If you think it should be changed, what changes would you recommend, and why?Be sure to respond to your classmate’s (Alexandra) post and explain whether you agree or disagree with that classmate’s position.I think we can continue to calculate GDP how we do now. There are so many factors that we are not able to include into the calculation but there always has been the same issue. The calculations they come up with are never 100% accurate they are a good estimation to get a better look at our economy. Just to be able to get a rough estimate of all of the income in one year I do not believe that anything needs to change. As stated, this can help us compare to previous years and look into trends to predict economic changes. If they were to try and get a better idea of earned income by looking into nonmarket transactions like babysitters, lawn care etc., this would lead to an invasion of privacy and possibly lead to more taxes. I am not sure if PayPal is still doing it, but they were going to start taxing people if they received more than a certain amount through there app a year. The only thing they should be looking into is those who are working here illegally and not paying taxes. They are taking away opportunities from others and benefiting by not having to pay into the tax system. That is what is affecting our GDP the most and most importantly our economy as a whole.
