"If you have a private firm and you spend a ton of money to pay employees, but what you produce is a flop, there will be no value to GDP. But government spending all gets counted as contributing to economic growth. That’s why in the early days of creating these measurements, some people didn’t want to count government spending."
- Robert HiggsEconomist and historian Robert Higgs, who is well-known for his work on political economy, has noted that economic indicators such as GDP can occasionally overlook important facets of a nation's economic health. He makes the point that private businesses' efforts do not support the expansion of the …