Metric For Sale

AITOOW wonders why an increase in gross retail sales figures is such an important metric to people? It doesn't really tell you what individuals are doing with their money. It is just a measure of prices times people. It should be growing. Population is growing. As such it is an easy hurdle to master. It's worthless to all but the most shameless grand standers for economic health. It can only go down if prices drop disproportionately or people stop spending as much per capita. Right now that figure doesn't tell us which it is. If sales are down because of a price drop then we can see the retailers themselves may have miscalculated/panicked and are to blame for the decline. This is not a cause for concern. If it isn't price depreciation then (when we deduct the increase in sales due to population increases) it is frugality/the economy and we might be concerned. They need to compare year over year prices as well. Gross sales is a stupid/lazy metric. It can be skewed to the upside by population growth given a false impression of economic growth and it can be skewed to the downside by price deflation.