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Simon Kuznets is undoubtedly the most influential economist of the 20th century, but hopefully not the 21st century. He is considered by many to be the father of GDP. He developed some of the first measures of national income, which eventually resulted in the creation of GDP as a measure of national economic success. He received a Nobel Prize in Economics for this work. However, Kuznets knew then what we know now — that any simplified measure of an economy will be abused and misused.

2020 Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang has made replacing GDP with an American Scorecard a central part of his human-centered campaign. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. In an increasingly complex society, we are using a single measure of economic success that was developed before we landed on the moon, before we understood climate change, before we built out our interstate highway system, and before the Information Age. GDP doesn’t measure anything related to the health of a population, the national debt, access to clean water, the poverty rate, environmental degradation, or access to high-quality education. And, we are seeing that GDP can grow while more and more Americans get left behind.

Simon Kuznets said, “Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns, and between the short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.” He understood that if we focus entirely on GDP, we will deprioritize other things like public health and environmental sustainability. In a recent town hall, Andrew Yang elaborated on this saying, “We have three measurements for our economic progress. It’s GDP, which again is going the opposite direction of life expectancy, stock market prices, which correspond to the fortunes of the top 20% of Americans, and headline unemployment rate, which is grossly misleading… and so these three numbers are giving us a falsely positive impression of how we’re doing.”

So, what is Andrew Yang’s solution? An American Scorecard. This solution would capture the multidimensional nature of economic success and societal wellbeing in America, and it would help redefine and build up human value. Andrew Yang wants to use an American Scorecard to measure and set goals for things like environmental quality, mental health, childhood success rates, quality of infrastructure, access to high quality education, infant mortality, and consumer debt. If we prioritize and measure these things, then we will be more likely to see progress on multiple fronts. GDP is dominating our attention, and it needs to stop.

We can of course include GDP, or some form of it, in our suite of metrics, but it should no longer be the singular measurement that we use to determine how our economy is doing. And, this is easy to implement as Andrew Yang explained in a recent town hall. As President he would simply ask the Bureau of Economic Analysis to report not only GDP, but a suite of metrics, and he would report on these metrics in a sleek slide deck at every State of the Union Address.

Making America work for everyone is a complex and multidimensional endeavor. This means we need to prioritize and measure multiple outcomes. Andrew Yang’s American Scorecard is just the beginning of reframing the analysis of our economy and society. Just as Bill James, the father of sabermetrics (Moneyball statistics), revolutionized baseball, Andrew Yang’s American Scorecard will transform our government to work for the people. The era of the myopic pursuit of GDP growth will soon end.