Joseph Stiglitz is a royal pain in the trasero for the dumbass-in-suit brigade of nodding donkey economists that led us into a financial crisis and still proclaim wisdom. Y'see, Stiglitz isn't like 99.999% of the dismal scientists because....
1) he's smart and actually makes sense
2) he has a Nobel prize for what he does
1) he's smart and actually makes sense
2) he has a Nobel prize for what he does
....and it's that second one that makes it tough for the brainless dumbasses that call themselves experts to dismiss him. So tomorrow Stiglitz is presenting his new findings on the world's obsession GDP (sponsored by Sarko de La France, et pourquoi pas?). Here's a Bloomie report quoting him and laying out a preview of what we can expect tomorrow and here are a few choice quotes from the man himself:
"GDP has increasingly become used as a measure of societal well-being and changes in the structure of the economy and our society have made it increasingly poor one."
"So many things that are important to individuals are not included in GDP,” said Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor. “There needs to be an array of numbers but we need to understand the role of each number. We may not be able to aggregate everything together."
"Most governments make a fetish out of it. If you take one message out of our report, make it avoid GDP fetishism,” he said. “The message is to encourage political leaders away from that."
Twobreakfasts take heed; the way you mentally masturbate over GDP, the whole GDP and nothing but the GDP whilst ignoring the disasterous social situation faced by whole swathes of your countrymen is about to be given lie by a man far, far smarter than you in these things. Twobreakfasts isn't the only one guilty here, but he's the smelliest proponent of growth at all (or perhaps 'any') cost. So I hope Stiglitz gets the traction he deserves on this issue and it gets the debate it deserves, though I suspect the status quo peddlers will want to sweep it all under the carpet as quickly as possible.