Class Summary 09/14

What is GDP? What is Rizzo Talking About?

To begin the lecture Rizzo gave a standard definition of what GDP actually is: 

GDP is a dollar value of all the goods and values offered in a society. GDP is a measure of wellbeing.

Then we learned that there are a lot of things that do not actually enter into GDP statistics; Only about 15% of what we consume is actually produced. 

For example, Rizzo's lecture is being consumed but it is not being produced literally, however this lecture still goes into GDP and is counted. 

After learning about GDP, we started questioning population growth and how that effects population income and wealth. The general consensus is that population growth is BAD and is hurting our economy; people say we're running out of space to live comfortably and running out of money and economic opportunities for the world population. Rizzo then CHALLENGED this:

We would take 0.47% of the Earth for comfortable living space for all of the people on the Earth and use the rest of the space for whatever we wanted. Would we want to do that? Probably not. 

World population has increased by a factor of 7, but world income has risen by a factor of 65. 

Maybe at some point more people are good? 

Population growth seems to create more wealth; more products are bought.

FINALLY it was said that, human progress always has enemies in one sort or another. People attack population growth for creating poverty within the world, however population is in some ways showing off to the world, it should not be viewed as something negative.