Grossed out or not, But whose GDP is it anyway?

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Contesting the usefulness of GDP, however, is nothing new. US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy questioned the Gross National Product (GNP) — GDP plus factor incomes earned by foreign residents, minus income earned in the domestic economy by non-residents — during the first campaign speech in 1968. 'It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile,' he had said.

As the US's real median income in 2020 has increased by roughly 127% since 1984, while the real GDP per person has increased by about 172%, questions about 'whose GDP has risen' may well also arise from Americans. We know that the contribution of a few wealthy people to GDP is significant. It's like the batting average in cricket — few high scores influence it.

But it does not accurately portray consistency, performances under pressure, home versus away performances, and performances while batting first or chasing. I'm speaking metaphorically, of course. A wider collection of metrics would better reflect the batter's potential.

Similarly, GDP shows something specific and crucial. It ignores social inequity, the contributions of unpaid work, the dwindling of natural resources or biodiversity, and how technology is changing society. GDP doesn't indicate if a recovery in the economy is equitable.

For instance, it fails to depict the growing divide induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. In their 2019 book, Good Economics for Hard Times, Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo suggested it could be 'time to abandon our profession's obsession with growth'. Although Bobby Kennedy's criticism has