There is something odd about the way we are currently talking about economic growth.
In the same week that large technology companies announced roughly $660 billion in planned AI‑related capital spending, equity markets erased more than $1 trillion in market value from those same firms. Analysts worried about returns, cash flow pressure, and capital discipline. Yet at the macro level, the reaction could not have been more different. Third‑quarter U.S. GDP growth clocked in at an annualized 4.3 percent, prompting officials and commentators to celebrate the economy’s “resilience.”
Both reactions cannot be right at the same time.
At the company level, analysts obsess over the distinction between spending money and creating value. At the aggregate level, GDP accounting collapses that distinction entirely. The result is a misleading picture of economic health—one we have seen before.
When companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta commit tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to data centers and chips, corporate accounting treats those outlays as investments, not expenses. They are capitalized and depreciated over time, keeping near‑term earnings intact. That is exactly how accounting is supposed to work.
Markets, however, look past the optics. Analysts ask whether those investments will ever earn their cost of capital. By late 2025, AI‑related capital spending was consuming the vast majority of operating cash flow at major hyper-scalers, while projected revenues lagged far behind depreciation costs. Investors responded rationally by repricing risk.
GDP accounting does not ask those questions. Investment spending counts as growth the moment it occurs, regardless of whether the capital will ever be productively used. In early 2025, economists estimated that data‑center construction accounted for the majority of U.S. GDP growth, even as non‑AI business investment and residential construction weakened.
This is not a new mistake.
From 2002 to 2006, residential construction surged and GDP growth looked strong. Housing investment reached historically high shares of output, financed by rapidly rising household debt. At the micro level, loan quality deteriorated and delinquencies rose. At the macro level, GDP continued to signal strength—until it abruptly didn’t.
The parallel to today’s AI boom is uncomfortable. Once again, debt‑financed investment is boosting headline growth figures while masking serious uncertainty about returns. Once again, the GDP accounting framework rewards activity, not outcomes.
The problem is not that GDP is useless. It is that we treat a single number as a scorecard for economic well‑being. Consumption that improves living standards and speculative investment financed by leverage both raise GDP in the short run, even though their long‑term implications are very different.
We should at least be honest about the composition of GDP. Growth driven by household consumption is not the same as growth driven by a capital‑spending arms race. We learned that lesson the hard way in 2008. Ignoring it again would be willful.
Company‑level analysts are already raising red flags. Aggregate reporting is not. That gap—between micro reality and macro celebration—is the real risk.
Why GDP Adds Consumption and Investment—and Why That Matters
At its core, GDP is a simple accounting identity. The Bureau of Economic Analysis defines it as the sum of consumption (C), investment (I), government spending (G), and net exports (NX). The formula is elegant, internally consistent, and indispensable for tracking total economic activity.
But the simplicity masks an important distinction. Consumption and investment enter GDP symmetrically, even though they imply very different things about future income and earnings. Consumption reflects value realized today—goods and services that directly raise living standards. Investment, by contrast, is a claim about tomorrow. It represents resources spent today in the hope of generating future cash flows.
That distinction is second nature in corporate finance and accounting. Capital expenditures do not create value merely because they occur; they create value only if they generate returns above their cost of capital. GDP accounting, however, counts investment when the money is spent, not when—or if—the returns arrive. As the BEA itself notes, GDP measures current production, not economic welfare or profitability.
This asymmetry matters enormously for interpreting growth. Consumption-led growth tends to signal realized gains in income and employment. Investment-led growth is inherently conditional. It can lay the groundwork for higher future earnings—or it can reflect overbuilding, misallocation, and debt-financed speculation. GDP, by design, does not distinguish between those outcomes.
Potential Solutions
The problem is not GDP itself, but how it is reported and interpreted. Several modest reforms could substantially reduce the confusion.
First, GDP releases should consistently emphasize composition, not just the headline number. The BEA already publishes detailed tables showing the contribution of consumption, investment, government spending, and trade to growth. Media coverage and policy commentary rarely lead with that breakdown. Making composition unavoidable would immediately clarify whether growth is being driven by household demand or by speculative capital spending.
Second, policymakers should explicitly pair investment-driven growth with balance-sheet context. Data on corporate leverage, household debt-service ratios, and cash-flow coverage are readily available from the Federal Reserve’s Financial Accounts of the United States. Investment that expands productive capacity looks very different when financed by retained earnings than when financed by rapidly rising debt.
Third, GDP should be complemented—not replaced—by indicators that better track economic sustainability. Real consumption per capita, real wage growth, and total factor productivity offer more direct insight into whether economic activity is translating into durable income gains. These measures cannot be inflated by a capital-spending boom alone.
None of these changes require rewriting national accounts. They require changing the narrative discipline around how GDP is used. Treating GDP growth as a starting point rather than a verdict would align macroeconomic reporting more closely with the rigor routinely applied at the company level.
A Final Word for Policymakers and Markets
For policymakers and market participants alike, the lesson is the same: spending can surge while value creation quietly erodes; debt can accumulate while headline numbers look strong. Markets, imperfect as they are, at least attempt to price this reality by focusing on future cash flows rather than past outlays. Macroeconomic reporting should aspire to the same discipline. Until we stop treating GDP growth as a verdict rather than a prompt for deeper analysis, we will keep mistaking motion for progress—and we will keep being surprised when today’s celebrated growth turns out to have borrowed too much from tomorrow.
This article was originally published by Forbes.com.