The Australian’s Adam Creighton has joined the conga-line of commentators attacking gross domestic product (GDP) as a welfare measure and has argued that a recession in Australia is “nigh on impossible” due to the federal government’s mass immigration policy:
GDP is particularly fraught as a measure of welfare for Australia. Politicians crow about the scarcity of our recessions — by convention, two quarters of negative GDP growth — but the relentless influx of people means it’s nigh on impossible to have one.
Consider that US net overseas migration was 595,000 last year; in Australia, with less than 8 per cent America’s population, it was about 240,000. Indeed, when adjusted for population, Australia has had recessions in 2000, 2006, late 2008 and is almost certainty in the midst of one now.
