GDP

We just started to learn a bit more about Gross Domestic Products (GDP’s) in class, and from an article that we were assigned last night.  We learned that GDP is calculated by the sum total of everything that is produced by a country.  Some examples that contribute to a country’s GDP are the consumption spending by households, investments spending by business, government spending, and net imports.  Overall this system is a pretty good indicator of a country’s well-being, but there are some things about the system that do not truly show how well off a country is. For example, there are some jobs that are used in order to prevent the bad things a country has done, like cleaning up oil spills or trying to solve climate change.  Even though people are working, they are fixing problems that the country has created for itself.  GDP also doesn’t show what people do at home, instead of at a job.  A person, taking care of their kids, does not affect a country’s GDP, but hiring a nanny or babysitter would. This is somewhat similar to what a GPA can show about a person’s academic work ethic in school.  Overall in most cases it can show how hard a person works towards getting good grades, but the GPA does not account for everything.  For example, a student could have a lower GPA than another student, but be in honors classes, which would make getting a good grade much harder.  GPA also does not take into account for the extracurriculars you do outside of school.  If you are an athlete that has multiple practices per day, it is going to be much harder to time manage for all your work, than someone that doesn’t do any practices.  Overall, the system does a pretty good job showing the well-being of a country, but there always are things that make the system not perfect.