How should we measure the economy? (with Diane Coyle)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2019

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pop quiz: What does “GDP” stand for? And now, quickly: what the hell does “gross domestic product” even mean? It turns out, the way we measure the economy changes the way we manage the economy, so if we want to broadly improve the lives of all Americans we need to measure the things that really matter. Diane Coyle: Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Former advisor to the UK treasury. Author of numerous books, most recently GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History, The Economics of Enough, and The Soulful Science. Founder of the consultancy Enlightenment Economics, specializing in the economics of new technologies. Twitter: @DianeCoyle1859 Further reading: (1) https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/remarks-at-the-university-of-kansas-march-18-1968 (2) https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/31/capitalism-redefined/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What is gb p you know we collectively believe that the stock market goes up that's good but it but it's just it's simply not true teachers are on strike again this morning to protest low wages and cuts in school funding.
0:12.6	A new study says the number of uninsured children in the United States rose for the first
0:17.1	time in nearly a decade.
0:18.8	And I am thrilled to announce that the United States economy grew at the amazing rate of 4.1%.
0:27.0	From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics with
0:38.3	Nick Hanauer.
0:40.2	In honest conversation about how to make capitalism work for everyone.
0:46.4	I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.
0:50.7	I'm Nick Henauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
0:54.0	So Nick, last episode we learned how the middle class has essentially been getting screwed for the past 40 years and I'm confused because when I look at all the economic statistics right now things seem to be going great
1:16.4	I mean that we have near record low unemployment we have near record high
1:22.4	corporate profits what's going on?
1:25.0	What are we measuring?
1:26.3	Yeah, and I think that, you know, you raise one of the fundamental questions is, you know,
1:31.5	like you get what you measure essentially, and for a long time, since the 1940s or 1950s,
1:39.0	we've measured the economy, we've measured growth, prosperity, characterized welfare in some pretty
1:46.3	funky ways. And I think a lot of those mistakes are coming home to roost today.
1:53.0	The GDP, gross domestic product,
1:56.0	as the fundamental measure of prosperity
2:00.0	and economic growth being sort of the best example of where we went wrong.
2:05.0	Right, so let's talk about what is GDP?
2:08.0	So GDP is gross domestic product.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Civic Ventures, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Civic Ventures and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.