Making Sense of "Made in the USA"
Why people care about GDP is that, though not a direct indicator, it's often used as a measure of economic health of a country and overall standard of living. The reasoning is fairly straightforward: Because GDP is a measure of everything a country sells, if its GDP is high, that means the country has a high amount of wealth because it's selling a lot. And while level of wealth doesn't necessarily correlate to a high standard of living (other factors, such as wealth distribution, employment rates and many others also play parts), it does correlate to overall economic activity, and an active economy is generally a healthy one. (If you're selling things, you're paying laborers, making investments, collecting taxes, etc.) Hence, why people care about and measure GDP. If it's high, you're doing okay, if it's low, you're not.