Conversation

True or false: “things you do for yourself don’t count towards GDP” (where “do” does not include “buy”)
8
13
Replying to
True. This is the main reason why personal housework doesn't count, but hiring a maid does. Repairing your car doesn't, but buying the motor oil does. If you can mediate it via money, you can tax it. Thus the push to moneyize everything.
1
2
Replying to
But in doing housework or repair your car, you use skills and tools that you probably got in the financial economy. Even something as apparently outside-the-economy as picking wild mushrooms probably utilizes information you got off the internet using the GDP-ed skill of literacy
1
1
Replying to
Then I don't understand the question. Is it "does this activity get *counted* in GDP" or "is there anything that hasn't been touched at all by the economy"?
1
Replying to
🤔 I guess it depends on when. A widget you buy and toss straight to landfill is measured the same as one that’s heavily used and tossed when worn out So I guess it gets optimistically counted as full utilization I’d say GDP today overcounts economic value by ignoring waste
Replying to and
The economic “ignoring” of waste is now the source of our largest expense — climate change. Fact that externalities never got assigned a direct cost is precisely why climate change even exists. Even Alexander von Humboldt saw it. Denial of basic math, not science, will kill us.
1
1