Andrew Yang: GDP Is an Outdated Economic Metric

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said Monday that the three chief indicators for measuring the economy -- gross domestic product, the unemployment rate and the stock market -- are misleading because they don’t reflect the life conditions of most Americans.

“GDP is at record highs.” he told the National Press Club in Washington, adding that “stress levels, financial security, student loan debt, suicides, mental illness, drug overdoses” were also at “record highs and multi-decade highs.”

Yang, countering President Donald Trump’s claims about the healthy U.S. economy, said that GDP -- which calculates the value of all finished goods and services and is the most widely used measure of the economy -- is a “terrible measurement for national well-being.” He said it is more than 100 years old and doesn’t take into account technological changes such as self-driving trucks, which he said would “be tremendous for GDP and very very bad for many Americans.”

Other indicators like the stock market also weren’t relevant to the majority of Americans. According to Yang, the bottom 80% of Americans own 8% of stocks in the U.S. and the bottom half of Americans do not own any. “So if you’re cheerleading the stock market prices, you’re essentially cheering on the forces of the top 20% of Americans.”

He said that if elected president he would modernize GDP to “include health, life expectancy, mental health, environmental quality. And I’ll present it every year at the State of the Union.” Yang, a former entrepreneur who is campaigning on issues such as a universal basic income, is polling at about 2.2% in the presidential race, according to Real Clear Politics.