Sam McDonald Chapter 9 Question 6

An interesting passage that I came across while reading chapter nine was the section about how GDP is measured. Normally I would equate the wealth and the growth of a country due to its GDP. But in reality, GDP per capita only accounts for how much goods and services are produced (divided by the country's population.) This means it doesn't take into account several important economic factors. A more holistic and realistic view of a nations wealth would take into account economic activity that isn't paid for, such as work that is done at home. Also is would take into account the degradation in the environment. An excellent example that Naked Economics cited was China; China has experienced a extremely fast growth in GDP in the past decade. But what its GDP doesn't take into account is how much of the environment China has destroyed, or the extent which it has polluted its cities (a majority of the top polluted cities are in China). Overall, I found that this passage was interesting because it made me realize that GDP sometimes shouldn't be the only way one measures the wealth of a country.