How is this for being completely out to lunch: The bicycle is the slow death of the planet?

General Director of Euro Exim Bank Ltd. got economists thinking when he said:

“A cyclist is a disaster for the country’s economy: he does not buy cars and does not borrow money to buy. He does not pay for insurance policies. He does not buy fuel, does not pay for the necessary maintenance and repairs. He does not use paid parking. He does not cause serious accidents. He does not require multi-lane highways. He does not get fat.

Healthy people are neither needed nor useful for the economy. They don’t buy medicine. They do not go to hospitals or doctors. Nothing is added to the country’s GDP (gross domestic product).

On the contrary, every new McDonald’s restaurant creates at least 30 jobs: 10 cardiologists, 10 dentists, 10 dietary experts and nutritionists, and obviously, people who work at the restaurant itself.”

Their only unit of account is job numbers, not wealth creation. It never occurs to any of them that the resources not used one way will end up being used somewhere else, and often in a more productive – that is, growth-inducing – way.