It’s our national mantra: GDP. Gross Domestic Product. No other figure rules our world more completely. We saw it again this week when the government released its latest revision of the first-quarter GDP numbers that showed the U.S. economy is contracting slightly. The only thing that’s now growing, it seems, is the fretting of pundits and economists over the new numbers. Their common cry: How do we get things moving again?
Read moreThe Lady Gaga Fix: How the U.S. Is Rethinking GDP for the 21st Century
This week the government released yet another revision of first-quarter economic growth showing that the U.S. economy grew a tad less than initially reported ‑- 2.4 percent rather than 2.5 percent. This revision was hardly consequential, but over the summer the Bureau of Economic Analysis will unveil a new way to calculate the overall output of the United States. And that revision will be dramatic.
Read moreCOLUMN - Building a better economic yardstick: the new US GDP
This week the U.S. government released yet another revision of 2013 first-quarter economic growth showing that the economy grew a little less than initially reported - 2.4 percent rather than 2.5 percent on an annualized basis.
Read moreWhy high corporate profits aren't so bad
Google, Amazon, eBay, Apple, Honeywell, United Technologies, Netflix, Target and on and on have thrived. And they're not thriving at the expense of society, whatever the rhetoric about inequality would suggest.
Read moreIs the GDP Report Really Important?
Today’s GDP report is proof of something that many have long suspected. Not, as the first headlines shouted, that the U.S. economy is in trouble, but that we need to stop using these numbers as proxies for how we are faring as a nation.
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