You can’t feed your family on GDP

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ScreenHunter_4281 Sep. 18 10.44

By Leith van Onselen

The New York Times last week published a great article on the folly of using GDP as the primary measure of economic advancement. The essence of the article is captured in the next chart, which shows how real median household income in the US has fallen since the late-1990s, despite reasonable growth in per capita GDP:

ScreenHunter_4346 Sep. 24 08.22

From the article:

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.