Why in fuck do we have to pay taxes to pay the wages of morons like this?
\”GDP is quite simply a measure of all the money we spend on all the stuff we buy – every financial transaction that takes places in the economy, all that adds to growth,\” says Andrew Simms, a fellow of the New Economics Foundation (Nef) and author of several books on the subject.
Dear God. Look, taking advice from Andrew Fucking Simms is a sign of idiocy in itself. But more than that, GDP is not a measure of financial transactions. It is a measure of value added in the market portion of an economy.
Just as an example, the purchase and or sales of shares is a financial transaction. It\’s also a financial transaction that is not included in GDP measurements. Or, just to make it simpler so that even a BBC journalist can understand it, let us look at currency. Trade, financial transactions in currencies, is some $1.5 trillion or so a day in London alone. UK GDP for the year is about £1.5 trillion. Sure, in theory, if the $ to £ exchange rate is the 250:1 of the number of trading days in the year then FX trading could be included in GDP. But given that the rate is more like 1.5 to 1 then what is this fucking moron bleating about? GDP does not measure transactions, it measure value added in transactions. You Moron.
But Black is the idiot who keeps on giving. Given that he has no clue what he is talking about he just stumbles into ever greater error. To drivelling, moronic, idiocy. And have I mentioned that we are forced to pay taxes for his wages yet?
Oxford University economist Dieter Helm has just been appointed to lead the UK\’s Natural Capital Committee.
Its role is to assess the financial worth locked up in trees, clean water, insect pollinators and every other part of the ecological kingdom, and present this set of accounts to the Treasury – which should then be able to make better informed decisions.
It\’s worth recalling that the UN-backed Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) project calculated the value of forest lost globally around the world at $2-5 trillion (£1.3-3.2 trillion) each year.
Yes, that is indeed excellent. We really should take a stock, not a flow view of such matters. We really should look at how much capital (whether natural or not) we are using to produce the current value add or income. Last time I looked at such numbers the OECD country which was pissing away the future the most was Norway. \’Coz they\’re pumping up all that oil, see? But as I say, sure, excellent, we should look at both the stocks and the flows. Or, to move from economic terms to accounting ones, at both the profit and loss account and the balance sheet, the capital position. Which is where fuckwit (have I mentioned that we pay for this ignorant yet?) Mr. Black goes wrong yet again:
Criticisms of GDP include:
* it measures \”bad stuff\” as well as \”good stuff\”
* it\’s a short-term balance sheet that pays no heed to longer-term factors such as a build-up of debt
No, you Godawfully ignorant tosspot. Your complaint is that GDP is not a balance sheet of any kind at all: it is purely and solely a P&L.
P&L\’s have their place: as do balance sheets. Both are useful depending on what it is that you wish to divine.
My problem now is, why are we forced to pay taxes to fund the salary of one so ignorant as this? Given the sheets and wankstains references already given, wouldn\’t it have been better if the perpetrator of this nonsense had been left as one after the grunting and sweat of their creation? Rather than being grown to spray his ignorance on the face of our society and then have the effrontery to charge us our own £sd for the privilege?