Yes, because money isn't everything. I know (you seem to be American) that this is probably a strange concept :-p

And HDI is still quantitative, it's still a number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index#New_me...

You might not like the magic numbers in the formula or the things they choose to weigh, but GDP is much, much too coarse to evaluate anything about the greater well-being of a population, especially in developed countries.

It’s a really terrible index if you’ve ever dig into the criticisms. It’s doesn’t do a very good job of measuring the things it claims to measure.

So you’ve basically argued against a quantifiable measure that is a major determinant of quality of life and replaced it with something worse?

>Yes, because money isn't everything.

That's the exact same argument people in net tax recipient states use for reducing federal taxation even when it hurts them slightly.

In the very least you'd have to adjust for purchasing power parity and look at the median rather than the mean, to say anything useful about quality of life for normal people.

Yes, I agree. GDP is a very rough measure. I'd prefer PPP, but I couldn't find it for individual states after a cursory search. (I still think most readers will be surprised by Alabama's GDP, relative to wealthy European nations, so it's not totally useless.)

It’s GDP not income so not sure what the median would do since that would ignore any distribution through taxes.