[tsiki]

It's always hard to tell what's really happening behind the GDP growth figures when comparing countries. The population of US and UK are currently increasing around 0.7% a year, while Germany is around 0%. That's a lot of additional GDP growth for both UK and US, even when excluding the fact that immigrants are at their prime working age and usually more beneficial for the GDP than an average citizen. This has a fairly big impact on what's seen on the news. Since depression is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, it's much easier for countries like US and UK to avoid "official" depression, and much easier for news outlets to talk about the "stagnating old Europe" or such; and of course, at the same time the living standard of an average German might be increasing and that of a UK/US citizen decreasing.

[ekianjo]

GDP is anyway an extremely biased thing to look at. There are many ways you can influence it to make it look like you are growing.

[tsiki]

Absolutely, personally I dislike how it's the single most powerful figure for decisionmakers. There have been many alternative measurements developed for measuring overall progress of an economy, but unfortunately they haven't taken much foothold.

[yk]

The problem is not so much GDP, as it is to measure the economy in one float. So GDP is a somewhat good measure, if you want a quick handle on production capacity, for standard of living something like purchase parity median income is better, but tells you nothing about relative strength of exports, etc...

[ldng]

Would you care to list the one you find relevant ? I'm interested.

[jjindev]

If we stick to "economics" without even going to "well-being," I think median net worth is the best bet. But you know, governments find it easier to "book" corporate profits as part of GDP and call it a day.

[tsiki]

Not strictly economic, but personally I quite like the idea of gross national happiness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness

On the more economic side, you have something like the Misery Index and its extensions (http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/misery-mena). Obviously composite indexes like these have their flaws too, but overall they are more comprehensive than GDP alone.

[agilebyte]

Don't worry, if UK quit the EU, you might see quite a few of those immigrants heading to Germany. That should fix that population growth.

[lifeisstillgood]

Aha - the UKIP double-whammy - I see Mr Farage firing up the policy word docs already.

[raverbashing]

Or they'll just do bilateral agreements to allow people from "the right countries" to be able to work there

Like Switzerland

[agilebyte]

This page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Switzerland seems to indicate the Swiss policy to be largely in line with the UK/EU one. Is that no longer the case?

I take it a lot of the rhetoric from Middle England has to do with dey tukk ur jerb from bad EU countries like mine so can't see the populace being happy with the same old policy.

[raverbashing]

Yes, it is very similar. Just remember that Switzerland is not part of the EU

So, theoretically, they're not in the EU, but an EU citizen has similar rights there as in other EU countries.

[kaybe]

Well, they did join the Schengen treaty, so cooperation between the police forces etc can be expected.

[g8oz]

Maybe he's referring to the mainstreaming of nationalist/racist overtones in parts of their political spectrum