Reply #12: Money is a fictional quantity, and GDP is a meaningless number used for propaganda purposes. [View All]

[AdHocSolver]

Years ago, I talked about economics with a woman of German descent who told me that after WWI ended, inflation in germany became so bad that, as she put it, it took "a barrel full of Marks" to buy a loaf of bread.

The GDP as used to declare the state of the economy is a meaningless number because of the assumptions it makes in computing and using that number. For example, GDP does not take distribution of income into account. Growth in GDP is assumed to benefit everyone the same way, even though historically, that has not been the case.

Your example demonstrates how geared the GDP figures are towards the wealthy. For a person of limited means on a fixed income, that person does not have the discretion of using that $20 to buy food or using that $20 to buy a share of stock. To such a person, the $20 is not fungible as it would be for a wealthy person. That is why GDP is meaningless and how it is used fraudulently.