In 1988, my economics professor was sick.
An anthropology professor filled in for the day.
He walked to the front of the room, looked at us, smiled, and asked one question.
"Why is our domestic production so gross?"
The class laughed.
Then he moved on.
I didn't understand why he asked it.
Yet somehow, that question stayed with me. Every few years, it would quietly resurface in my mind. I never quite found an answer that satisfied me.
Nearly forty years later, I think I finally understand what he was trying to teach us.
Gross Domestic Product—GDP—is one of the world's favorite scoreboards.
When it rises, politicians celebrate. Economists analyze it. Financial markets react. It is often treated as though it tells us whether a nation is succeeding.
But GDP answers only one question.
How much did we produce?
It does not answer what may be the more important question.
What kind of society did that production create?
GDP does not measure dignity.
It does not measure hope.
It does not measure whether a young person believes their future can be better than their past.
It does not measure whether hard work is rewarded or whether opportunity is available to those willing to pursue it.
It does not measure whether an elderly couple can retire without fear.
It does not measure trust between neighbors, confidence in our institutions, or whether people feel connected to one another.
In fact, GDP can rise while many of those things are moving in the opposite direction.
For years, I found myself listening to debates over how equally the economic pie should be divided.
Today, I think there is another question that deserves equal attention.
Can people bake a bigger pie for themselves?
A healthy nation is not one in which everyone arrives at the same destination. People possess different talents, pursue different ambitions, and make different choices. Personal responsibility matters. Agency matters. Opportunity should never guarantee identical outcomes.
At the same time, neither should the circumstances of a person's birth place a ceiling on what they can become.
To me, a healthy nation is one in which a person's future is influenced more by their character, effort, and choices than by the circumstances of their birth—while ensuring that every person can live with dignity, regardless of where they begin.
That strikes me as a far more meaningful measure of success than GDP alone.
Perhaps that anthropology professor wasn't criticizing economics.
Perhaps he was reminding us that economics and anthropology ask different questions.
Economics asks how much we produced.
Anthropology asks what kind of people—and what kind of society—that production helped create.
Both questions matter.
But one is a means.
The other is the end.
Production is a means. Human flourishing is the end.
The Parting Glass
When I think back to that classroom in 1988, I realize that some lessons take decades to understand.
We should absolutely measure what we produce. We need to know whether an economy is growing, whether businesses are investing, and whether innovation is improving our standard of living.
But those numbers were never meant to be the destination.
They are signposts along the road.
The destination is a society where every person has the opportunity to develop their talents, exercise their agency, accept responsibility for their choices, and rise as far as their ability and determination will carry them—while ensuring that every person, regardless of where they begin, can live a life of dignity.
If we can build that kind of society, GDP will still matter.
It just won't be the thing that matters most.