[potlee]

> The apt comparison would be between Apple’s revenue and Indonesia’s GDP, because GDP is not a measure of wealth, it’s a measure of output: the total value of goods and services produced by the country in a year.

Sounds like you want profit and not revenue then? Just like a trade deficit is subtracted from GDP, shouldn’t you subtract the costs from revenues of a company to arrive at a similar metric?

[627467]

Revenue seems apt. Countries GDP also do not take costs and taxes into account...or does it?

[azernik]

It's more that it doesn't take depreciation and destruction into account - the broken windows fallacy.

Annual change in National Wealth (an obscure metric, because it's so difficult to quantify) is a closer match to profit - after performing all your activities, how ahead do you get in terms of infrastructure, education, durable goods, etc.? Whereas GDP measures the amount of activity, in the same way as revenue or expenditure is a good way of estimating how much work is getting done at a company.