A Narrow View of Growth

In class today we talked about short-sighted, artificial economic growth as measured by GDP. It reminded me of a report on China's so called "ghost cities", which are a result of GDP quotas set by the central government. There are an estimated 64 million vacant apartments, many of which overlook the slums of people who cannot afford the rent for these places. Bejiing alone has more unoccupied apartments than all of the United States.

The South China Mall, or "The Great Mall of China" (as in The Great Firewall of China--I mean *Wall) is supposedly the largest mall in the world, but is also the emptiest. I think this is the sort of thing opponents of Keynesian economics point to to discredit government intervention in the economy.

Some speculate that this is a housing bubble that will dwarf the one we had in the U.S., though I think China's hope is to move much of its rural population into these areas and actually use them.

So it is clear that while GDP is a way for countries to inflate their image, it does not necessarily correspond to net qualitative gain. It is reductively economic, and even then, in a narrow sense of the word. What it measures is important, but it's not the entirety of what an economy is, or what it should be serving. There are other indicators though, that when taken together, might get us closer to a more cohesive picture, like the Human Development Index, Genuine Progress Indicator, or more recently the Social Progress Index.