It seems like these days GDP is a movable feast according to how govts run their economies. When I learned economics and worked with its tools, it was a measure treated with respect, though of course international comparisons were frought with difficulties.
Take this article, which references a respected economic analyst & writer:
Fresh GDP numbers came in and it was a blowout. The kind of blowout that only a $2.7 trillion government deficit can buy while the private economy crumbles around it. Another couple blowout GDP reports like this and Americans will be living under an overpass. The essential ruse comes down to unfathomable amounts of government spending that is being recorded as productivity and output, and interpreted by the media as growth: In the past 12 months the federal deficit increased by $1.3 trillion. Yet we only got hwasalf that in GDP — about $600 billion. In other words, everything else shrank. It’s even worse for that brave and stunning Q4 — there we got just $300 billion in extra GDP for — wait for it — $834 billion of new federal debt.To put a fine point on it: Essentially, [GDP is measuring] the pace at which we’re going Soviet, replacing private wealth with government waste.
