What did GDP ever do to deserve this?

Daniel Drezner: What did GDP ever do to deserve this?

One of the more invidious comparisons analysts like to make is to compare the size of something with a country's gross domestic product. An old warhorse of political economy/anti-corporate types, for example, is to say that the sales of multinational corporations exceeds many countries GDP. This is true but irrelevant — GDP measures the value-added that an economy generates per year, so the proper and correct comparison is between a firm's profits and GDP. When using that metric, corporations suddenly don't look so big. …