And in spite of the recent covid drop, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product: the value of all goods and services sold in a specific time period) has also steadily increased over the past five years.
By the GDP measure, America looks like the biggest and the best in the world. A staggering 24% of the global economy is right here. Yet also right here we have higher poverty rates and higher infant mortality rates than almost any other developed country in the world. And we pollute more per person than in any other country. According to these and other broader measures of quality of life, it doesn’t feel to me like we are better off here than in other places.
Rather than hearing and reading about the Dow Jones and GDP* all the time, I would rather we looked at a broader set of indicators, perhaps rolled into an index (several measures mathematically combined into a single number).