daniel_newhouseThe way we calculate GDP is just plain silly. First off, income should be taken out of GDP altogether. What counts is the money people pay for services or the money they pay for products. When a product is paid for the full value of that product should be calculated as the GDP for the point of origin. This will require a much better tracking and labeling system, but it would be well worth it. The result would be a GDP lower than GNI, which I am sure is true.
Statistics we need.
Hypothetically speaking, archaeologists of a future civilization looking back on our own would track standard of living with 1 essential metric: the size per bed of farmhand dormitories. This is the standard of living of the poor.
What they frequently substitute, since farmhand dorms disintegrate in the archeological record, is the size of churches. Churches are frequently made of durable material.