If 21st-century Republicans have an idol, a graven image we collectively worship, it is Gross Domestic Product. All discussion about the flourishing of our nation is reduced to GDP, and its increase is seen as an ironclad refutation of anyone who questions whether America is, in fact, flourishing. But GDP, as today calculated, is largely fake, disconnected from the actual production of value. Worse, flourishing-as-quantity is a destructive way to view our society. It was once commonplace that the value of very many things, a mother’s love or a scarlet sunset, was immense, but unmeasurable. We have forgotten this, to our detriment. To truly make America great again, a crucial first step is dethroning GDP as a measure of our greatness.

Yes, there is some benefit to having in our quiver of analytical tools an aggregate way to view additions to economic value, the production of new goods and services. Think of 20 men and women who do nothing except eat and drink what is at hand. They produce no value; the GDP of their little society is zero. If, however, they begin to produce anything, goods or services, they produce value. How to measure such production has, however, generated different approaches, and the method we use today, while it serves our desire for simple ways of viewing the world, conceals truth in order to serve political ends.

The core measurement decision is what goods and services should count in GDP. Until recently, for hundreds of years, GDP was held to exclude many compensated activities that were regarded as not actually productive, such as rents. Today, however, GDP is held to encompass all bargained-for exchanges—that is, any exchange with a price, and only exchanges with a price. Thus, if everyone in our 20-person society takes up farming and raises children, GDP remains zero even though a great deal of value, most of all the enormous shared benefit of maintaining and increasing the society itself, is now being created. Only when they start selling things to each other for money is GDP born.

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