David_Pilling

Hiya, you're really stretching my knowledge here. GDP is bad at grappling with the so-called black or grey economy, which is huge in India. Anything not taxed is hard to measure. Modi tried to regularise this with his demonetisation strategy, but it seems the parallel economy is pretty resistant. That means much of what goes on in India will never be captured by GDP. 2. No, sadly. Just ask my bank manager. 3. People have been saying China will crash for years and years. They've all been proved wrong so far. Don't bet against the folks in Zhongnanhai. Jim Chanos tried it - and by all accounts failed. Having said that, the Chinese leadership have implicitly admitted that lots of their growth was frothy (and boosted by the fact that they didn't account for the terrible pollution that was a side-effect of helter-skelter growth). They're now trying to do something about the type of growth they have - and as a result the economy is slowing. 4. As for Bitcoin, I know less than you I'm sure. Just ask my bank manager (see question 2)

I take it the one about post-nuclear society is the fun one. You're obviously having a stressful day :) In seriousness, I guess it depends what infrastructure survives. If there's some semblance of government, then an official currency might revive. If there's not, then we'd move into virtual currency territory - but of course you'd need a computer network for that to work. Is that still standing? On 2) I am definitely not arguing that we replace GDP. I'm talking more about being a) sceptical and b) adding to the way we look at the economy so that GDP is no longer the king of numbers. I'd say, median household income, some measure of wealth, some measure of wellbeing and some measure of natural capital (you could c02 as a proxy or some measure using satellite imagery of natural resources). Some of these measures already exist, some are work in progress. But my strong message is that when you hear X is growing by 3 per cent, stop to think what 'growing' means.

My book is most definitely not an anti-expert book (despite the occasional jab). In a sense I'm arguing for more expertise. And I'm also arguing for a better-educated public that can be more engaged with what might seem like esoteric debates. Another message of my book The Growth Delusion is that numbers in general and measurements in particular are very political. We only measure something if we care about it. So let's measure the right things.

There's an interesting study that shows Brexit will knock about £350m off British GDP, precisely the same number that Boris put on that bus. Perhaps he forgot the minus sign! I am opposed to Brexit personally, but again the fact that British people voted for it is related to the arguments in my book. We have been taught to believe that the economy is sacred and we should never do anything to harm growth. In a funny sort of way, British voters ignored that. Bill Clinton has turned out to be wrong. It is not always, "the economy stupid"

Look at Wikipedia: all human knowledge (well a lot of it) available to everyone (well anyone with access to a computer). An incredible addition to human wellbeing. It's contribution to GDP? Zero