. >> reporter: the king for almost all countries, adds economics writer zachary karabell. >> governments rise and fall on their ability to say, "i enhanced g.d.p.," or the populace's ability to say, "no you didn't, and you know, g.d.p. went down under your watch." >> reporter: but how does g.d.p.'s still-lofty status square with robert kennedy's 1968 critique? or with more recent evidence of its limits, which nobel economist joseph stiglitz has pointed out. >> thirty years ago, we weren't talking about climate change. environmental degradation was not as important as it is today. >> reporter: in 2009 stiglitz chaired an international panel tasked with finding better measures of progress that included the environment and inequality. >> g.d.p. has been going up per capita, but most americans are actually worse off, so median household income is actually falling. >> reporter: like them or not, better prosperity gauges are hardly a novel innovation. since the 1970s, for example, in the himalayas, the buddhist kingdom of bhutan, with g.d.p. per person less than the congo, has used gross natio

this week zachary karabell in his book, 73 -- 73 b. economic impact varies. he argues are not so in today's and they were created. the program is about an hour. >> zachary karabell, you have written a fascinating book all about how we live in a world defined by economic indicators and how just a handful of them coming gdp, inflation have come to define us as the nation, even make a very good case they are very flawed and have been to a certain degree. how do we get to this point. 1066 and there's a fascination with trying to measure where we stand in the road. >> guest: at least a reply wrote a book about numbers. i'm not even a trained academic economist. so i was interested in this question how to live in a world with his numbers are so woven into a conversation about howard doing as a nation. any nation. not just we as americans. so the question of what is this always the case? now, wasn't always the case. only recently given how central they were. the question was when these countries -- many people want to figure out what was going on economic really wit