Wouldn't not including government expenditures make GDP a worse metric? They are the largest spender in every country and I don't see why it should matter who is buying something for GDP purposes
The argument typically goes that "because most government services are not sold in markets, they have no market-determined prices to be used in calculating their total value to those who benefit from them." In fact "some government services have negative value: given a choice, the people victimized by these 'services' would be willing to pay to be rid of them."
Wouldn't the value be calculated as whatever the government payed for them just like the rest of GDP? Maybe I'm misunderstanding how government spending is added to GDP but the fact that the amount spent on something doesn't always correlate to the value doesn't seem to be a problem unique to the government and hardly seems a reason to ignore what is in the US up to a few trillion in spending
