GDP Was Never Going to Make You Happy
Optimist Economy
Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi
4.9 • 829 Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gross Domestic Product is the big dog of economic numbers. But this measure of the economy’s size has massive blind spots. It ignores income inequality and citizens’ wellbeing. It rewards consumption and thus environmental degradation. Yes, it is vital to know if your economy is growing or shrinking and why. And yet maybe GDP shouldn’t be the lodestar. In fact, as economist Kathryn Edwards relays, the person who invented GDP warned us of its limitations.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine. I'm Robin. On this show, we believe the |
| 0:10.7 | U.S. economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time. |
| 0:24.6 | At the top of the show, we like to do a few little announcements. |
| 0:29.7 | First of all, hey, we've been messing around with paid advertising to see if that would work on our platform. |
| 0:31.3 | And I accidentally turned it on. |
| 0:34.6 | So if you got an ad for the Beef Council or ZipRecruiter, my bad. |
| 0:39.5 | But if you got an ad for Starbucks please let us know Amazon Starbucks Amazon the Bezos family like if you got an ad that's actually funny |
| 0:47.5 | like please write in and let us know it was only on it was at the very very end very very |
| 0:52.1 | end so it's also this is a measure that you are truly a devoted listener because it came on after we snap out, Andy and Sophie. But the Beef Council, great. I got ZipRecruiter. Oh, and we found out that we earned $7.25, the minimum wage. Exactly. The exact minimum wage is what we earned from accidentally putting on ads. I can't, oh, seven, |
| 1:13.5 | if it had been 726, it would have been worse. The fact it was 725 was just, oh, chef's kiss. |
| 1:18.6 | Perfect. Yeah. Totally perfect. And then also the usual announcements about how we need money. |
| 1:23.9 | It's either these awkward calls for money or ads from the beef council. Like you tell us what you |
| 1:28.9 | want. But we have a website, optimisteconomy.com. We will take your money in any way we can find |
| 1:37.0 | ourselves capable of actually accepting it, which has been a struggle these many months. And we have |
| 1:41.9 | an email, optimist.economy at gmail.com. We love to hear from you. |
| 1:45.5 | We also really, really love your reviews. |
| 1:49.3 | My favorite one from this past week was just, |
| 1:51.6 | this show is a chaotic mess. |
| 1:54.6 | Really? |
| 1:55.0 | You didn't like your gaze are listening. |
| 1:57.0 | Oh, and your gaze are listening. |
| 1:58.5 | Yeah, the gays are listening that I loved, |
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