You can gear a policy to help with GDP growth or with unemployment. Which do you choose?
(For the sake of argument, assume that the relative improvement is approximately the same, on whatever scale you choose to use)
And what if the policy which helped unemployment would damage GDP?
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Neither. You need to control inflation. GDP doesn't mean shit if the money itself doesn't mean shit. You could have a skyrocketing GDP that only exists due to ridiculous inflation. If we were able to revert back to a time where $.25 could get you into the movie theater, then our GDP would be very, very low. However, because the money itself would be worth so much, the GDP would be a helluva lot more meaningful than it is now. If we can have a low inflation rate, then prices will be low enough to the point where lower wages would mean more than higher wages now. That would make it so businesses have less room to raise and drop prices, since each dollar would mean much more to the average guy. Think of it this way: Whether a bag of chips is $3 or $4 right now, it really doesn't matter. That little dollar is takes ten minutes to make in even the worst of jobs. But if $1 was the equivalent to $5-$7 now, companies would be forced into keeping their pricing intervals smaller. Making your money worth more makes it so that way more people have access to the smaller things.