For the former, it’s questions like, in looking at GDP in 1900 vs. GDP today, how do you take into account goods and services such as air travel, central A/C and heating, computers (etc. – the examples are nearly endless) that couldn’t be bought for any price in 1900?

For the latter, I’ll automobiles as an example. I don’t believe that GDP comparisons fully capture, say, the vastly greater reliability of a car being built now vs. a car that was built in 1970.

Two-earner households, even in the middle class, outsource many activities that were once performed in-house. Child care, cooking, home maintenance and cleaning… There are some benefits to this system (especially to those who earn much more working than they pay for the help), but it increases GDP by more than it increases economic well-being.

Would be interesting for an economist to go back and add in the “mommy wages” over the decades (but please use something realistic rather than the inflated figure you see publicized on Mother’s Day). Has GDP really risen as much as we think?

I know we wouldn’t be nearly as wealthy today if we had earned more instead of de-monetizing part of our income for a decade.

If everyone stops watching TV and instead go take walks in the park and likes that more and is healthier, but there is less overall need for labor so everyone works 39.8 hours instead of 40 hours we are not somehow “worse off” just because there is less stuff.

Economists have become so enthralled by their models and what they can measure that they have lost touch with what they are actually doing (allocating goods and labor efficiently).