Latest / How Canadian Markets Work / Episode 21: What GDP Measures (And What It Leaves Out)

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Episode 21: What GDP Measures (And What It Leaves Out) · How Canadian Markets Work

• 0:00
  Have you ever looked at a news alert flashing
• 0:02
  on your phone, reading something like, you know,
• 0:06
  economy booms, growth hits 2%. Oh, I think we
• 0:08
  all have, yeah. Right. And then you look at your
• 0:10
  actual life, your grocery bills, your rent, and
• 0:13
  you just think... Who exactly is this economy
• 0:16
  booming for? Yeah, that feeling of profound disconnect
• 0:19
  is incredibly common. It really is. And that
• 0:22
  feeling is exactly why we are digging into a
• 0:26
  stack of financial white papers and economic
• 0:28
  explainers today. Our mission for this deep dive
• 0:32
  is to decode gross domestic product. Also known
• 0:36
  as GDP. Exactly, GDP. Because right out of the
• 0:39
  gate... Our sources highlight this mathematical
• 0:43
  paradox that perfectly captures that feeling
• 0:45
  of disconnect you get when you read the news.
• 0:47
  It's a fascinating paradox, really. We are going
• 0:49
  to look at how it is mathematically possible
• 0:51
  for an economy to grow by 2%, but the people
• 0:54
  living inside that economy actually become poorer.
• 0:57
  Yeah, and it often feels like there must be some
• 1:00
  kind of data manipulation happening behind the
• 1:02
  curtain when those two realities collide. Right,
• 1:05
  like someone is rigging the numbers. Exactly.
• 1:08
  People naturally assume an expanding economy
• 1:11
  equates to rising purchasing power. But the divergence
• 1:15
  between a booming headline and a shrinking wallet
• 1:18
  is, well, it's just simple arithmetic. Just arithmetic.
• 1:21
  Yeah, and it's one of the most fundamental misunderstandings
• 1:24
  about economic data. Unpack this arithmetic for
• 1:27
  me, then, because when the newspaper says the
• 1:29
  economy is growing, I naturally assume the average
• 1:32
  person's financial situation is improving. How
• 1:34
  does a math prove otherwise? Well, let's imagine
• 1:38
  a hypothetical economy that produces, say, $100
• 1:41
  billion of output in a single year. OK, $100
• 1:43
  billion. And then the following year, it produces
• 1:46
  $102 billion. So there's your 2 % growth. Exactly.
• 1:50
  The newspapers are entirely accurate to report
• 1:52
  an expanding economy. But in that same year,
• 1:56
  let's say the population of that country grows
• 1:58
  by 3%. Oh, I see where this is going. Right.
• 2:00
  You have more total output. but you have an even
• 2:03
  larger number of people sharing that output.
• 2:05
  So the output per person actually fell by roughly
• 2:07
  1%. Wow. So both statements are entirely true
• 2:11
  at the exact same time. The overall economy grew,
• 2:14
  but the average person's share of that economy
• 2:16
  shrank. You've got it. That's exactly it. But
• 2:19
  we almost never hear that second number. We just
• 2:22
  hear the 2 % growth and wonder why we feel broke.
• 2:25
  So if the math is that rigid, we need to establish
• 2:28
  what this massive metric is actually capturing
• 2:31
  before we can even interpret those headlines.
• 2:34
  That's a great place to start. When a government
• 2:36
  says it produced $100 billion of GDP, what actually
• 2:40
  goes into that bucket? Well, the sources define
• 2:43
  GDP as the total market value of all final goods
• 2:47
  and services produced within a country in a given
• 2:49
  period. That sounds like a bit of a mouthful.
• 2:52
  It is, but every single word in that definition
• 2:54
  acts as a very strict filter. For instance, market
• 2:57
  value means it only counts things with a price
• 3:00
  tag attached to them. Measured in dollars, right?
• 3:02
  Right, measured in dollars. If money doesn't
• 3:04
  change hands, the activity is completely invisible
• 3:06
  to the statistical agencies. So if market value
• 3:09
  is the primary trigger, what prevents the government
• 3:12
  from double counting? Like, if I buy raw lumber
• 3:15
  from a mill, use it to build a dining table,
• 3:17
  and then sell that table to my neighbor, isn't
• 3:20
  the statistical agency counting the value of
• 3:22
  the wood twice? That is exactly where the phrase
• 3:25
  final goods comes in. The statistical agencies
• 3:29
  have to be meticulous about tracing supply chains
• 3:31
  to avoid artificially inflating the size of the
• 3:35
  economy. Oh, so they only count the end product.
• 3:37
  Exactly. They only capture the end of the line
• 3:39
  for any product or service. The value of the
• 3:42
  raw lumber is already baked into the price of
• 3:44
  the dining table you sold. That makes sense.
• 3:46
  If they counted the mill's sale and your sale,
• 3:49
  the data would suggest more wealth was created
• 3:51
  than actually exists. It requires an enormous
• 3:54
  amount of data collection to isolate just that
• 3:57
  final transaction. It seems like geography plays
• 3:59
  a huge role here too, right? Because the definition
• 4:02
  specifies within a country. It's a crucial distinction,
• 4:06
  yes. So if a foreign -owned auto manufacturer
• 4:08
  operates a plant in Ontario, does that mean all
• 4:11
  of that production counts toward Canadian GDP?
• 4:14
  even if the profits flow back overseas. It absolutely
• 4:17
  does. It belongs entirely to Canada's GDP. The
• 4:21
  metric is concerned with where the physical or
• 4:23
  economic activity is taking place, not whose
• 4:25
  passport the CEO holds. Wow. Okay. And conversely,
• 4:29
  if a Canadian bank operates a massive branch
• 4:32
  network down in Mexico, None of that activity
• 4:34
  counts toward Canadian GDP. Because the labor
• 4:37
  and the transactions are happening on Mexican
• 4:39
  soil. Exactly. So it bolsters Mexico's economic
• 4:42
  data, not Canada's. Got it. Now, there is an
• 4:45
  expenditure formula the sources outline for how
• 4:48
  all this activity is tallied up. It's consumption
• 4:51
  plus investment plus government spending plus
• 4:53
  exports minus imports. That's the classic formula,
• 4:56
  yes. And adding up consumer purchases, business
• 4:58
  investments, government spending, and our international
• 5:00
  sales. That makes intuitive sense to me, but
• 5:04
  the subtraction of imports always confuses people.
• 5:07
  Oh, it's a very common point of confusion. Oh,
• 5:09
  it's a very common point of confusion. I've heard
• 5:11
  politicians use this formula to suggest that
• 5:14
  imports are actively destroying our wealth. Why
• 5:17
  are we penalizing the economy for buying foreign
• 5:20
  goods? Well, subtracting imports is not a moral
• 5:23
  judgment or an economic penalty for that matter.
• 5:27
  It is purely arithmetic housekeeping. Housekeeping?
• 5:30
  How so? Think about how massive and complex modern
• 5:34
  supply chains are. When statistical agencies
• 5:37
  measure total consumption, they're looking at
• 5:39
  aggregate data. They're looking at everything
• 5:41
  households bought. OK. So if you bought a car
• 5:44
  imported from Germany. That purchase is sitting
• 5:46
  right there in the domestic consumption bucket.
• 5:49
  Oh, because the government can't possibly go
• 5:50
  through every single cash register receipt in
• 5:52
  the country and separate the domestic apples
• 5:54
  from the imported oranges. Exactly. The sheer
• 5:57
  volume of transactions makes that impossible.
• 6:00
  So they simply add up all consumption, all investment
• 6:02
  and all government spending, completely agnostic
• 6:04
  of where the items originated. And then what?
• 6:07
  Then, at the very end of the equation, they subtract
• 6:10
  the grand total of all imports. It simply removes
• 6:13
  the value of things that were produced somewhere
• 6:15
  else. So we are left only with what was produced
• 6:18
  domestically. You've got it. It's just a mathematical
• 6:21
  correction to ensure we aren't taking credit
• 6:24
  for German manufacturing. Okay, so it's a filtering
• 6:26
  mechanism, not a punishment. That makes perfect
• 6:29
  sense. Yeah, it's just math. But if the math
• 6:31
  is that strict about counting every final good
• 6:34
  and geographic border, how do we still end up
• 6:37
  with headlines that feel completely divorced
• 6:39
  from reality? Well, that's where things get interesting.
• 6:42
  It just seems like there's a gap between counting
• 6:45
  the money and feeling the wealth. I keep seeing
• 6:47
  the term real GDP in the headlines. If there's
• 6:50
  a real GDP, does that imply the 2 % growth number
• 6:53
  I just read was fake? That is a great question.
• 6:56
  You are touching on the inflation illusion. The
• 6:59
  inflation illusion? Yeah. Nominal GDP is the
• 7:02
  economy measured at current prices. Let's go
• 7:04
  back to your furniture example. Suppose a simplified
• 7:07
  economy produces 100 dining tables a year. selling
• 7:11
  for $1 ,000 each. Okay, so nominal GDP is $100
• 7:15
  ,000. Exactly. Now the next year, the economy
• 7:18
  produces the exact same number of tables, 100.
• 7:22
  But inflation hits, and the price of each table
• 7:24
  rises by 10 % to $1 ,100. So nominal GDP just
• 7:29
  rose by 10 % to $110 ,000. Right. But nothing
• 7:33
  new was actually created. Society didn't get
• 7:36
  richer, things just got more expensive. Precisely.
• 7:39
  If you only look at nominal GDP, you would think
• 7:42
  the economy just experienced a massive boom.
• 7:45
  But the actual tangible output didn't change
• 7:48
  at all. And that is why economists rely on real
• 7:51
  GDP. Yes, real GDP attempts to strip out the
• 7:55
  inflation. To do this, statistical agencies have
• 7:58
  to build massive, complex baskets of goods, track
• 8:02
  prices across thousands of stores over time,
• 8:04
  and create what's called a GDP deflator. That
• 8:07
  sounds exhausting. It is an incredibly difficult
• 8:09
  process, but it's the only way to know if a country
• 8:11
  is actually producing more stuff or just charging
• 8:14
  more for the same stuff. Right. But that adjustment
• 8:16
  solves the inflation illusion. It doesn't solve
• 8:18
  the population illusion we talked about at the
• 8:20
  very beginning. No, it doesn't. The divergence
• 8:22
  between. total GDP and per capita GDP. I always
• 8:27
  visualize this like a pizza sitting on a table.
• 8:30
  A pizza is a perfect analogy here. Right. So
• 8:33
  total GDP is the aggregate size of the whole
• 8:35
  pizza. If the pizza gets 2 % bigger and you're
• 8:38
  the government looking at your total tax base,
• 8:40
  you are thrilled. Oh, absolutely. A bigger aggregate
• 8:43
  pizza means more total resources for the country,
• 8:46
  more geopolitical weight, and more capacity to
• 8:49
  fund national projects. But if you're an individual
• 8:52
  sitting at that table, a bigger pizza doesn't
• 8:55
  guarantee you a bigger meal. No, it doesn't.
• 8:57
  If the pizza grew by 2%, but suddenly there are
• 8:59
  3 % more people pulling up a chair to eat it,
• 9:02
  your individual slice just got smaller. Exactly.
• 9:05
  And that's per capita GDP, right? The output
• 9:07
  per person. The pizza grew, but your dinner shrank.
• 9:09
  That's spot on. Total GDP measures the aggregate
• 9:13
  size of the machine. But per capita GDP is the
• 9:16
  true proxy for the average person's material
• 9:19
  circumstances. It's what people actually feel.
• 9:22
  Yes. And when a country experiences significant
• 9:25
  population growth, those two numbers can point
• 9:27
  in opposite directions for extended periods of
• 9:30
  time. This divergence is actually a profoundly
• 9:34
  significant debate in places like Canada right
• 9:36
  now. Oh, really? Yeah. You have periods where
• 9:39
  the total economy is technically expanding, avoiding
• 9:43
  a traditional recession, but GDP per capita is
• 9:46
  flat or actively declining. So the whole pizza
• 9:49
  is growing, but the slices are shrinking. Exactly.
• 9:52
  And the political arguments surrounding this,
• 9:55
  debates over immigration targets, housing policy,
• 9:57
  capital investment, and labor productivity, they
• 10:00
  are highly contested. I can imagine. Reasonable
• 10:02
  experts disagree fiercely on the policy solutions.
• 10:05
  But the underlying arithmetic remains absolute
• 10:08
  fact. total output and per capita output are
• 10:11
  telling two very different stories about living
• 10:13
  standards. And when you take all this mathematical
• 10:15
  complexity and try to package it for public consumption,
• 10:18
  you run into the actual reporting mechanics.
• 10:20
  Which is a whole other challenge. The sources
• 10:22
  highlight that looking at the raw data is completely
• 10:24
  different from reading a news alert, especially
• 10:27
  depending on where you live. Canada actually
• 10:29
  has a very unique quirk in how it releases this
• 10:33
  data to the public. Yes, Canada is quite unique
• 10:36
  in this regard. Most countries in the world,
• 10:38
  including the United States, only publish their
• 10:41
  GDP data on a quarterly basis, so every three
• 10:44
  months. Because gathering this data is incredibly
• 10:46
  expensive and resource intensive. Oh, hugely
• 10:49
  expensive. But Canada is highly unusual because
• 10:51
  it invests the resources to publish GDP monthly,
• 10:54
  and it breaks it down by specific industry. Does
• 10:57
  a month -to -month view really offer that much
• 11:00
  of an advantage? It does, actually. It gives
• 11:01
  you a much finer -grained, almost high -definition
• 11:04
  picture of the economy. In a quarterly system,
• 11:08
  a severe economic contraction in January can
• 11:10
  be completely masked by a surge in March. Leaving
• 11:14
  you with a headline that just suggests a mediocre
• 11:16
  stable quarter. Exactly. But with Canada's monthly
• 11:20
  data, analysts can pinpoint economic shifts in
• 11:23
  near real time. You can see if mining output
• 11:26
  fell in the exact same month that residential
• 11:28
  construction rose, rather than waiting three
• 11:31
  months for a blurred snack shot. So armed with
• 11:33
  that high -definition view, the sources provide
• 11:35
  a really brilliant three -point checklist for
• 11:38
  anyone trying to decipher economic news. The
• 11:40
  very handy checklist. The next time you see a
• 11:42
  GDP headline, you should ask yourself three questions.
• 11:45
  Number one, is it real or nominal? Because if
• 11:49
  it's nominal, it might just be inflation masquerading
• 11:51
  as growth. Right. Number two, is it total or
• 11:54
  per capita? Did the pizza get bigger or did your
• 11:57
  slice get bigger? Also crucial. And number three,
• 12:00
  is it a quarterly change or an annualized rate?
• 12:03
  The sources spend a lot of time on this annualized
• 12:06
  trap, and it seems to artificially inflate how
• 12:09
  we perceive economic momentum. It really does.
• 12:12
  Statistical agencies often take a single quarter's
• 12:15
  growth. Let's say the economy grew by a modest
• 12:17
  0 .5 % over three months. Instead of just reporting
• 12:20
  the actual 0 .5%, they express it as the annual
• 12:25
  rate it would produce if that exact pace was
• 12:28
  sustained for an entire year. So they multiply
• 12:30
  it roughly by four and report it as 2%. annualized
• 12:33
  growth exactly that feels like having one really
• 12:36
  good week at the gym like I eat a salad I hit
• 12:39
  the treadmill three times and I project that
• 12:42
  out and tell myself I'm gonna be an Olympic athlete
• 12:44
  by December that is a wonderful way to look at
• 12:47
  it it's assuming a massive trend based on a tiny
• 12:50
  sample size it is and the danger is that this
• 12:53
  reporting quirk catches journalists and commentators
• 12:55
  constantly a headline will Blair economy surges
• 12:59
  2 % when in reality It only grew a fraction of
• 13:03
  a percent that quarter. So it's expressing a
• 13:04
  quarterly reality in yearly terms. Right. You
• 13:07
  think the economy is galloping when really it
• 13:09
  just took one moderate step forward. And this
• 13:12
  completely ignores the reality of data revisions.
• 13:15
  Oh, the revisions. The idea that the numbers
• 13:17
  are changed after they are reported is fascinating
• 13:19
  to me. Are these just minor tweaks or fundamental
• 13:23
  shifts in the narrative? They can be substantial.
• 13:26
  Initial GDP estimates are based on incomplete
• 13:28
  data. Statistical agencies have to rely on surveys
• 13:32
  and early indicators to rush the release out
• 13:34
  while it's still news. Sure. But months later,
• 13:37
  as more comprehensive corporate tax data and
• 13:39
  actual business filings roll in, they revise
• 13:42
  the numbers. A quarter that was initially reported
• 13:45
  as strong growth can be revised down to a contraction
• 13:47
  months later. But by that time, nobody is paying
• 13:50
  attention to the correction, right? Exactly.
• 13:53
  The stock market and the political discourse
• 13:54
  react to the first flawed number and largely
• 13:57
  ignore the accurate history. So my Olympian gym
• 14:00
  week actually gets revised down months later
• 14:02
  to me just buying a new pair of running shoes
• 14:04
  and sitting on the couch. But society has already
• 14:06
  moved on. Yes, society has entirely moved on.
• 14:09
  Well, we've established how GDP is measured,
• 14:11
  the mechanics of inflation. and the reporting
• 14:13
  traps. But honestly, the most compelling part
• 14:16
  of this deep dive for me is looking at what this
• 14:19
  ultimate economic scorecard fundamentally fails
• 14:22
  to capture. The blind spots. Yes, the blind spots.
• 14:25
  The things GDP completely misses are arguably
• 14:29
  more important than what it actually counts.
• 14:31
  It comes back to that very first rule. It only
• 14:35
  measures market transactions. And this leads
• 14:37
  to what the sources call the unpaid work paradox.
• 14:41
  If you and your neighbor each cook dinner for
• 14:44
  your own families, clean your own homes and care
• 14:47
  for your own children, the GDP effect of that
• 14:50
  immense amount of labor is exactly zero. Economically
• 14:53
  speaking, according to the metric, nothing of
• 14:56
  value happened. Which is wild. But if you cook
• 14:58
  dinner for your neighbor's family and your neighbor
• 15:00
  cooks dinner for your family and you both hand
• 15:02
  each other a $50 bill for the service, suddenly
• 15:05
  GDP just went up by $100. Exactly. It is the
• 15:08
  exact same amount of food, the exact same amount
• 15:10
  of human effort, but because you introduced a
• 15:12
  market transaction, it counts as economic growth.
• 15:15
  It really highlights the absurdity of the metric
• 15:17
  when applied to human life. A massive foundational
• 15:20
  sector of human effort is entirely invisible.
• 15:23
  Like child care and elder care. Yes. Child care
• 15:26
  provided by parents, elder care provided by families,
• 15:28
  community volunteering. If a parent leaves a
• 15:31
  salary job to raise a child at home, GDP actually
• 15:34
  falls. Even though society is gaining an immense
• 15:37
  benefit. Exactly. An unpriced benefit. but a
• 15:41
  benefit nonetheless. The economists who created
• 15:43
  GDP in the 1930s, like Simon Kuznets, were dealing
• 15:47
  with the Great Depression. Right. They were hyper
• 15:50
  -focused on industrial output, manufacturing,
• 15:53
  and getting people back to waged work. They knew
• 15:55
  unpaid labor was valuable, but they couldn't
• 15:58
  figure out a reliable way to price it, so they
• 15:59
  just left it out. We base our entire political
• 16:02
  success on a number that completely ignores the
• 16:05
  unpaid labor -keeping society functioning. But
• 16:08
  it gets even darker when you look at the disaster
• 16:10
  paradox. Oh, the disaster paradox is quite something.
• 16:13
  Wait, hold on. I want to make sure I understand
• 16:14
  this. You're telling me if a hurricane wipes
• 16:17
  out a trillion dollars of coastal housing, the
• 16:20
  government's economic scorecard actually goes
• 16:22
  up. Yes. That can't be how the math works in
• 16:25
  reality. Doesn't the loss of the houses register
• 16:27
  anywhere? It does not register in GDP. This is
• 16:31
  known in economics as the broken window fallacy.
• 16:35
  GDP measures the flow of economic activity. not
• 16:38
  the stock of wealth. When the hurricane destroys
• 16:41
  the city, the loss of wealth is immense. But
• 16:44
  when the rebuilding effort starts paying construction
• 16:47
  crews, buying new lumber, pouring new concrete,
• 16:51
  All of that labor and material represents market
• 16:54
  transactions. So the disaster actually raises
• 16:57
  measured GDP because it forces a massive surge
• 17:00
  in spending just to get back to the starting
• 17:02
  line. It just measures the rebuilding, not the
• 17:04
  destruction. Exactly. It does not measure the
• 17:06
  opportunity cost. what that money could have
• 17:09
  been spent on to actually improve society if
• 17:11
  it didn't have to be used to replace what was
• 17:13
  destroyed. That is staggering. A metric that
• 17:16
  rewards a society for suffering a catastrophe.
• 17:18
  And this lack of nuance applies to government
• 17:21
  services too, right? Yes, it does. If things
• 17:23
  like a public court system or national defense
• 17:25
  or public health inspections don't have a market
• 17:28
  price like, you can't buy a court verdict off
• 17:30
  a shelf, how does the statistical agency measure
• 17:33
  their contribution to the economy? Because there
• 17:35
  is no market price. to gauge the value of those
• 17:38
  services. Statistical agencies value them at
• 17:41
  cost. At cost? Yes. Whatever the government spends
• 17:44
  to provide the service is assumed to be the economic
• 17:47
  value of the service. Wait. So if a government
• 17:49
  department is incredibly inefficient and spends
• 17:52
  twice as much money to provide the exact same
• 17:55
  quality of public health inspections, GDP mechanically
• 17:58
  goes up. That's exactly right. Simply spending
• 18:01
  more money mechanically increases measured output
• 18:04
  in that sector, regardless of whether the service
• 18:06
  actually improved or whether the public got any
• 18:09
  real benefit from the extra spending. There is
• 18:12
  no qualitative assessment at all. None whatsoever.
• 18:15
  If we synthesize all of this, the core takeaway
• 18:17
  is pretty sobering. We took an arithmetic tool
• 18:20
  designed in the 1930s to measure industrial output
• 18:23
  during a depression, and we essentially turned
• 18:26
  it into a religion. That's a very accurate way
• 18:28
  to frame it. GDP has no moral compass. It measures
• 18:32
  activity. It does not measure benefit. It counts
• 18:34
  the transaction. It doesn't care about the outcome.
• 18:36
  It's completely blind to human well -being. It
• 18:40
  was never designed to measure human well -being.
• 18:42
  income distribution or environmental sustainability.
• 18:45
  In fact, Simon Kuznets explicitly warned the
• 18:49
  U .S. Congress in the 1930s against using his
• 18:52
  metric as a measure of national welfare. He warned
• 18:55
  them. He did. He argued that the welfare of a
• 18:58
  nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement
• 19:01
  of national income. And yet that is exactly what
• 19:04
  modern politics has done. The next time you are
• 19:07
  scrolling on your phone and you see a headline
• 19:09
  screaming about a booming GDP, you are going
• 19:12
  to view it through an entirely different lens.
• 19:14
  I certainly hope so. You are going to ask is
• 19:16
  this real or nominal? Am I looking at actual
• 19:19
  growth or just inflation? You're going to ask
• 19:21
  is this total or per capita? Did the whole pizza
• 19:24
  get bigger or did my individual slice get bigger?
• 19:27
  Crucial questions. And you're going to check
• 19:29
  if some journalist fell for the annualized trap,
• 19:32
  multiplying a single good week at the gym into
• 19:34
  a year of Olympic glory. And most importantly,
• 19:38
  you're going to remember the blind spots. The
• 19:40
  things that truly matter. Yes, you're going to
• 19:43
  remember that GDP is completely blind to the
• 19:45
  unpaid laborer holding our homes together and
• 19:48
  that it perversely rewards the cost of rebuilding
• 19:51
  after a disaster. It is a profoundly powerful
• 19:54
  number for central bankers and policymakers,
• 19:57
  but it only answers the specific question it
• 19:59
  was designed to ask. It tells you how fast the
• 20:02
  economic engine is running. But nothing else.
• 20:04
  Right. It tells you absolutely nothing about
• 20:06
  whether the car is driving in a direction that
• 20:08
  actually benefits the passengers. Which brings
• 20:11
  me back to where we started. That feeling of
• 20:13
  disconnect between the headline and your reality.
• 20:16
  Now you know why. The headline is measuring the
• 20:19
  aggregate output of the machine, but you are
• 20:21
  living in the unmeasured nuance. Beautifully
• 20:23
  put. I want to leave you with a final thought
• 20:25
  today. Something to mull over on your own that
• 20:28
  builds on all of this. If GDP is so fundamentally
• 20:31
  flawed at measuring actual human wellbeing, if
• 20:34
  it completely ignores the massive value of unpaid
• 20:37
  labor and literally rewards society for experiencing
• 20:40
  disasters, what would our world look like if
• 20:43
  governments adopted an alternative metric? It's
• 20:46
  a fascinating thought experiment. Imagine if
• 20:48
  global policy wasn't driven by GDP but by something
• 20:51
  like a genuine progress indicator, a metric that
• 20:55
  actually assigned a positive dollar value to
• 20:57
  long -term environmental sustainability, a metric
• 21:00
  that assigned economic weight to a parent staying
• 21:03
  home to raise a child, or a neighbor caring for
• 21:05
  an elderly friend. It would change everything.
• 21:07
  It really would. How would that entirely reshape
• 21:11
  what our political leaders prioritize if the
• 21:13
  scorecard they were trying to win actually reflected
• 21:15
  the things that make a life worth living?