"Hooray for GDP!!" Nice paper on the positives and negatives of this measure of production and whether is it a good measure of Standard of Living.

Here is a link to The Conversable Economist to a TERRIFIC post on the significance of Gross Domestic Product as a measure of societal well-being/standard of living.

Gives the pros and cons of this way of measuring of production. 

Here are the top 4 points of a the paper the posting cites as source material.

1. GDP is hopelessly flawed as a measure of welfare. It ignores leisure and women’s
   work in the home. It takes no account of pollution and carbon emissions.
2. GDP ignores distribution. In the richest country in the world, the United States, the
   typical person or family has seen little or no benefit from economic growth since the
   1970s. But over the same period inequality has risen sharply.
3. Happiness should be the grand aim of policy. But the evidence is that, above a certain level, a higher material standard of living does not make people any happier. ...
4. Even if higher GDP were a good idea on other grounds, it’s not feasible because the
   environmental damage would be too great.

Here is the link to the original paper cited. "Hor