Greg Mankiw points to Europe

as a lesson in "what not to do".

Sure, GDP is terrible because it conflates static and dynamic, so we don't know how much of it is velocity, etc. But then please let me know what's a better first approximation indicator and I can use that instead. (Reminds me of all the SAT-haters who want to just use GPA--ok, genius, what simple normalization across GPA suppliers can we use to compare apples to apples?)

UPDATE: GDP is a little bit like good cholesterol; the more the better.