Recently, I was listening to a respected American professor (I won’t share his name) who knows better, use the oft-cited but totally fallacious GDP argument. You may have heard this argument before, and it is inevitably made by Americans when they want to explain to use poor non-Americans why they are so wealthy and we fall so far below the mark. It goes like this: If you take the GDP/person of (insert country here) where would it fall in relation to the GDP/person of the US states? I’ll give you a hint: Ontario ranks below Georgia, which by the way is the second poorest state in the union. Where might Europe, or more correctly the EU fall? It would be dead last.

Anyone reading this who has visited Georgia, or Oklahoma, or the Ozarks, and also visited Paris, Rome, Madrid or any other part of Europe for that matter, might find it puzzling. The two US locations I’ve cited have backbreaking poverty. Europe has poverty to be sure, and so does Ontario, but nothing the likes of what you can find in the poorest regions of even the richest states in the US.

So why do Americans use this comparative analogy? Because it demonstrates their overweening “wealth”. But, and this is a BIG but, it tells you nothing of any real value. The metric of GDP/person is as valuable as a metric as is the measure of anthills/neighbourhood. Allow me to back up and be clear: No country comes close to having the collective wealth — measured in total dollars — as the US. But that doesn’t tell the full story. America has more dollars because it has more billionaires. Let’s use the same metric of dollars/person and apply it Oman. It would put the USA in the shade but is Oman “wealthier” than the US? Only is if you use this fallacious analogy.

Let’s have some fun with numbers. The average wealth of a Canadian household is $1 million dollars. But that’s nation-wide. The median wealth nation-wide is half of that. In Petawawa, Ontario (a small Army town) it is far lower because houses are cheaper than in downtown Vancouver or Toronto. Let’s do a mental experiment. It is Saturday morning in Petawawa. Your kids play in the local Under 14 hockey league, so you are sitting in a semi-frozen arena with 49 other moms and dads sipping on Tim Horton’s coffee. For the sake of argument, let’s say that these parents are all worth about $400,000 each. Sitting in the bleachers is $20 million of net worth. (50 x 400,000) Suddenly, Elon Musk, who is visiting his long-lost Canadian cousin from Saskatchewan, steps into the arena. The net worth of the audience is now over $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000 — by the way, the $20 million just became a rounding error). The “economic growth” demonstrated by these parents is phenomenal! They now have a median wealth of $20 billion. Aren’t they brilliant!

Back to GDP/person. It is a completely meaningless metric. Given the choice, would you rather live in Paris or rural Oklahoma? I’ve been to both and believe me there’s no difficult choice there. Don’t misunderstand. Rural Georgia, or Oklahoma or Kentucky or anywhere you care to name can be quite beautiful and charming, but don’t pretend that it is “richer” than Europe or Ontario or the Foothills of Alberta. That is nonsense.

It is true that Europe and Canada both have productivity issues. Our economies have not grown as quickly or as steadily as the US economy. But life is about more than a constantly growing GDP. If having a constantly growing economy is the measure you want to use to choose where you live, then you should move to China or India. Their GDP growth has actually outstripped the USA.

I’m not sure when we all became economists. As a young man, I do not recall any politician or newspaper considering the GDP (GNP in those days) as a daily concern for Canadians. Our PM said it well the other day in Calgary. Canada is not the biggest, but we are the best.

Amen, Mr. Carney. Amen.