Tim Harford (“Elon Musk is wrong about GDP”, Spectrum, Life & Arts, March 29) is right to criticise Elon Musk for saying that government expenditures should be excluded from GDP. Harford is also right in saying that others “have said silly things about GDP”.
However, in quoting Robert Kennedy’s speech in 1968 to students at the University of Kansas, Harford fails to grasp Kennedy’s main message, which was that “too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things”. He wasn’t saying that GDP — Kennedy uses GNP to make his point — should be redefined as Harford implies. Rather that the US, or any country, should not be judged by a growth measure that omits so much of what counts in life and includes so much of what is harmful. Kennedy said that the US should “confront the poverty of satisfaction — purpose and dignity — that afflicts us all”.
In the more than six decades since Kennedy gave his speech, it has become increasingly clear that as long as governments prioritise GDP growth, the mounting social and environmental problems confronting so many countries today will only get worse.
Peter A Victor
Toronto, ON, Canada
