GDP is also deceptive. Retail sale, especially to the individual is the most significant metric both because it shows what the most significant aspect of the economy, i.e. human beings are able to spend, and because retail sale is the terminal end of the entire economic process. This is why implementing a macro-economic general discount at retail sale would be so powerful and would integrate the goal of Austrian economics (deflation) into the entire economy. Costs are summed at retail sale for any product or service. Hence a discount there that was rebated back to the retail merchant enables that merchant to discover and set his best competitive price (a retail discount is NOT price controls because the merchant sets his price himself BEFORE the [rebated] discount) and then the discount shifts the vector of the entire economy toward price deflation.

A retail discount actually utilizes one of the truest and most general processes of the physical universe namely what is referred to in various Wisdom traditions as the cycle of action, namely Start, Change and Stop. Every process has this precise and simple but powerful character. Economists, not generally being very wise, have missed it….and thus their theories do not accurately decipher importances and fail.

Jack:  “retail sale is the terminal end of the entire economic process”
The end of the process is profit, followed by investment in wealth creation.
Retail customers are useful idiots.

Me:  @Jack

Cute reply, but not a relevant systemic insight. Retail sale is where production becomes consumption and is a full STOP for any and all goods and services. The salient things to take from this fact are that all costs are summed at that point and that no economic agent can be harmed or manipulated at and afterward of that point. As Austrians are all the time pi$$ing and moaning about manipulation of their God the market, the above should allay their dogmatic fears. Of course it takes a long time sometimes to see the truth when one has a long standing (and false) opinion about what is economically doable.