Sometimes I think about is how we measure whether a country is doing well economically. A country can report economic growth but that doesn’t necessarily mean that life is easier for the people living in that country. Someone may be working long hours, spend more on basic needs and still struggle to save anything at the end of the month. There are also the works that people do without getting paid even though this kinds of works doesn’t get to appear in headline GDP figures.
I know GDP has it purpose and I’m not saying that economic growth doesn’t matter. I just wonder whether we sometimes focus so much on the numbers that we forget to ask what does numbers actually mean for ordinary people.
If the country’s GDP keeps growing but most people don’t feel any improvement in their daily lives, should we still all that economic progress? Why or why not?
It definitely does not tell you how things are going in a country, but it's an indicator of how much productivity a country is outputting in comparison to others. Let's take two examples and compare though, America has high salaries but in return people have to use their vastly over expensive healthcare system and are lucky to get 8 days "PTO" off per year. They have a history of being particularly innovative, but working yourself to death with little leisure time doesn't sound that appealing. Then there is Europe which usually has some form of "free" (covered by taxes) or affordable insurance for healthcare. It has arguably better food standards and quality. It also has much more time off with 20+ days in most countries being quite common with some offering 30+ days per year. It might have slightly lower wages but I think quality of life is much better. None of this is really described by GDP.
You are also forgetting the most important example, China. When you think of China, they do have a huge GDP, don't they? And yet when you think of the Chinese, you do not think of wealthy people, do you? I mean, they are a "sort of" communist nation, that is true, but they are not fully communist, in the sense that people can own businesses and make money; look at Alibaba. Hence in theory, China has a huge GDP, but ordinary citizens there is poor and they got to that level from left-wing ideology.
On the other hand, the USA is the most capitalist nation in the world, so much so that they have even very little regulation compared to all other capitalist western nations. And yet, they also have very rich people at the top, and yet ordinary American is poor, so poor that thousands die from not being able to afford medical care, and millions are undercovered medically, and live worse. So both nations, have very rich at the top, and millions of poor at the bottom, and yet one came from capitalist roots, while other came from communist roots, and somehow they reached the same place.
