system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
eli5, what exactly is 'GDP'/'GDP per Capita'?

When discussions about a country's economic power/standards of living are brought up GDP is often the go-to metric, but what exactly does it mean? What money is flowing where and to who that defines this number?
gpt
Definitionally it is "the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period", or in a super simplified manner "How much money was spent on stuff made in this country over a given period of time". If you had personally bought all the products and services made in the country you would have spent about the GDP of that country.

It's used as a metric to estimate the strength of the economy and production of the given country. A country with a high GDP is producing a lot of stuff, and thus the economy is likely doing all right. A country with a low GDP isn't producing as much stuff, so maybe their economy isn't as strong. 

GDP per Capita is just the GDP divided by how many people live in the country. It's essentially "the average value created by each person in the country". This allows us to compare the economies of different countries with respect to their population, because of course India with a billion people can produce more stuff than Iceland can with 360 thousand people, but if they two were the same size Iceland would have a GDP thirty times as large as India, which is a much better indicator of the economic realities in either country when ignoring the size difference. India produces more stuff and has a larger economy overall, but an average person in Iceland is producing more value than an average Indian, suggesting that maybe the quality of living or average wealth is higher for the average Icelander then the average Indian.