GDP vs Economic Growth – Building The Death Star Was An Economic Catastrophe

GDP vs Economic Growth – Building The Death Star Was An Economic Catastrophe by Janet Neilson, Foundation For Economic Education

Expensive machines that destroy planets have negative economic value

To the editor of the National Post:

Last week’s column, “Blowing up the Death Star in Star Wars would have cost more than $500 quintillion — and crippled the galaxy,” is an amusing article, but it makes a disturbing error by neglecting the nature of Death Stars as killing machines. Musing about the cost of their destruction is like musing about the cost to the economy of dismantling a death camp.

Three major errors in economic reasoning lead to this oversight:

The first is to mistake the cost of the inputs of a...