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What is GDP? 什么是 GDP？

How do you measure the size of an entire economy? Let's say I buy a coffee here in London for three pounds. Those three pounds are factored into the United Kingdom's GDP and so is this barista’s salary and this espresso machine. In fact, most of what's around you is part of GDP. GDP is an important gauge of the overall health of an economy. It stands for gross domestic product. Simply put, GDP measures the total value of all goods and services in a country. That means it measures a lot of stuff worth a lot of money. Here in the UK GDP is around two and a half trillion dollars per year. In the United States, the world's biggest economy, it's around nineteen trillion dollars every year. How do you get to these numbers? While you can calculate GDP in a few different ways, but the most commonly used equation goes like this, consumption plus investment plus government spending plus net exports equals GDP. 如何衡量整個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)體的規(guī)模?假設(shè)我在倫敦花3英鎊買(mǎi)了一杯咖啡。這三英鎊被計(jì)入了英國(guó)的GDP，還有這個(gè)咖啡師的工資和這臺(tái)濃縮咖啡機(jī)。事實(shí)上，你周?chē)拇蟛糠謻|西都是GDP的一部分。GDP是衡量一個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)體整體健康狀況的重要指標(biāo)。它代表國(guó)內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值。簡(jiǎn)單地說(shuō)，GDP衡量的是一個(gè)國(guó)家所有商品和服務(wù)的總價(jià)值。這意味著它衡量了很多價(jià)值不菲的東西。英國(guó)國(guó)內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值大約是每年兩萬(wàn)五千億美元。在世界最大的經(jīng)濟(jì)體美國(guó)，每年大約有19萬(wàn)億美元。你是怎么得到這些數(shù)字的?雖然你可以用幾種不同的方法來(lái)計(jì)算GDP，但最常用的方程是這樣的，消費(fèi)+投資+政府支出+凈出口等于GDP。

Let's break that down. Consumption is another way of saying consumer spending. It's the money you or I spend on physical goods like coffee and services like a haircut. In many developed economies like the UK or the US, consumer spending makes up more than half of the country's GDP. The second part of the GDP equation is investment. This measures how much businesses spend on things like buildings, land and equipment. It also includes a major consumer investment, buying a home. Investment can take a hit when the economy is suffering. You can see in this chart domestic business investment plummeted in the US during the financial crisis. That's because companies were trying to save money instead of putting it towards things like factories, machinery and equipment. OK, now we get to government spending. This is the money local, state and national governments spend on things like roads, schools and defense. Government spending varies a lot depending on each country's approach to public goods and services. Take for example France, where government spending amounts to roughly 56% of GDP. That's compared to 41% in the UK and 38% in the US. 讓我們來(lái)分析一下。消費(fèi)是消費(fèi)支出的另一種說(shuō)法。它指的是你或我花在咖啡等實(shí)物商品和理發(fā)等服務(wù)上的錢(qián)。在英國(guó)或美國(guó)等許多發(fā)達(dá)經(jīng)濟(jì)體，消費(fèi)者支出占該國(guó)GDP的一半以上。GDP等式的第二部分是投資。該指數(shù)衡量的是企業(yè)在建筑、土地和設(shè)備等方面的支出。它還包括一項(xiàng)主要的消費(fèi)投資，即買(mǎi)房。經(jīng)濟(jì)不景氣時(shí)，投資可能會(huì)受到打擊。你可以從這張圖表中看到，在金融危機(jī)期間，美國(guó)國(guó)內(nèi)企業(yè)投資大幅下降。這是因?yàn)楣驹噲D省錢(qián)，而不是把錢(qián)花在工廠、機(jī)器和設(shè)備上。好了，現(xiàn)在我們來(lái)談?wù)務(wù)_(kāi)支。這是地方、州和國(guó)家政府在道路、學(xué)校和國(guó)防等方面的支出。政府支出的差異很大，取決于每個(gè)國(guó)家對(duì)公共產(chǎn)品和服務(wù)的態(tài)度。以法國(guó)為例，該國(guó)政府支出約占GDP的56%。相比之下，英國(guó)的這一比例為41%，美國(guó)為38%。

That brings us to the final part of the GDP calculation, net exports or exports minus imports. A lot of countries have negative net exports, meaning they bring in more products than they send out, for example, the UK imports around one billion dollars worth of coffee every year, but only exports around three hundred fifteen million, meaning its net exports of coffee are negative.?Countries around the world collect data on consumption, investment, government spending and net exports. This makes GDP a universal measurement and a way for countries to stack up against one another, but it's not just the sum of the equation people look at. You'll often hear about the GDP growth rate or the percentage change in GDP over time. Generally, if an economy is healthy, GDP growth expands. If an economy is in bad shape, GDP growth contracts. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are referred to as a recession. 這就引出了GDP計(jì)算的最后一部分，即凈出口或出口減去進(jìn)口。很多國(guó)家的凈出口為負(fù)，這意味著他們進(jìn)口的產(chǎn)品比出口的多，例如，英國(guó)每年進(jìn)口價(jià)值約10億美元的咖啡，但僅出口約3.15億美元，這意味著其咖啡凈出口為負(fù)。世界各國(guó)都在收集消費(fèi)、投資、政府支出和凈出口的數(shù)據(jù)。這使得GDP成為一種通用的衡量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，也是各國(guó)相互競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的一種方式，但它不僅僅是人們所關(guān)注的等式的總和。你會(huì)經(jīng)常聽(tīng)到GDP增長(zhǎng)率或GDP隨時(shí)間變化的百分比。一般來(lái)說(shuō)，如果一個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)體是健康的，GDP增長(zhǎng)就會(huì)擴(kuò)大。如果經(jīng)濟(jì)狀況不佳，GDP增長(zhǎng)就會(huì)收縮。連續(xù)兩個(gè)季度的GDP負(fù)增長(zhǎng)被稱(chēng)為經(jīng)濟(jì)衰退。

However, GDP doesn't always give a full picture of the economy. Critics say the equation puts too much weight on production and manufacturing and not enough on services and the digital economy. Just think of Spotify. For ten dollars a month, you can listen to unlimited music from a huge range of artists. In the past, you’d have to buy all of those albums separately, with each one contributing to GDP. It's hard to factor a digital service like Spotify into the GDP equation which is used to measuring physical goods. GDP also doesn't measure economic equality and well being. So even if a country is really rich according to GDP, wealth may be spread unevenly. Plus, GDP excludes unpaid work like volunteering for charity or childcare and it doesn't factor in costs like pollution or illegal activity. Some experts have come up with alternative measures to GDP that measure overall happiness and quality of life, but so far none of these have stuck. Maybe it's just too hard to put an economic value on that first sip of Morning Joe. GDP并不總是經(jīng)濟(jì)的全貌。批評(píng)人士說(shuō)，這個(gè)等式過(guò)于重視生產(chǎn)和制造業(yè)，而對(duì)服務(wù)業(yè)和數(shù)字經(jīng)濟(jì)重視不夠。想想Spotify吧。每個(gè)月花十美元，你就可以無(wú)限制地收聽(tīng)來(lái)自眾多藝術(shù)家的音樂(lè)。在過(guò)去，你必須單獨(dú)購(gòu)買(mǎi)所有這些專(zhuān)輯，每一張都對(duì)GDP有貢獻(xiàn)。很難將Spotify這樣的數(shù)字服務(wù)納入用于衡量實(shí)體商品的GDP方程式中。GDP也不能衡量經(jīng)濟(jì)平等和福祉。因此，即使一個(gè)國(guó)家按照GDP計(jì)算真的很富有，但財(cái)富的分配可能是不均衡的。此外，GDP不包括無(wú)償工作，如志愿做慈善或照顧孩子，也不考慮污染或非法活動(dòng)等成本。一些專(zhuān)家提出了替代GDP的方法來(lái)衡量總體幸福和生活質(zhì)量，但到目前為止，這些方法都不可行。也許只是很難給第一口Morning Joe咖啡賦予經(jīng)濟(jì)價(jià)值。