What Having a Baby Has Taught Me about GDP

This is where the GDP bit comes in. Having managed to get almost everything we needed for a small fraction of that 1,000 figure, my contribution to our gross domestic product is now several hundred pounds smaller than it would have been had I gone and bought everything shiny and new, even though we've got everything we wanted. This is just one tiny example of the kind of free or low-cost transaction that technology is making much easier. And these transactions get lost in the leading measure of economic output.