Real versus nominal value (economics)
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a measure of aggregate output. Nominal GDP in a particular period reflects prices which were current at the time, whereas real GDP compensates for inflation. Price indices and the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts are constructed from bundles of commodities and their respective prices. In the case of GDP, a suitable price index is the GDP price index. In the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts, nominal GDP is called "GDP in current dollars" (that is, in prices current for each designated year), and real GDP is called "GDP in [base-year] dollars" (that is, in dollars that can purchase the same quantity of commodities as in the base year).
Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
A gross product account for a nation (in which GDP is an entry) is an account of factor incomes and factor expenditures generated by production. It is "not" (as Thomas Piketty highlighted) an account of the total capital assets of a nation, that shows what happens with those assets, "nor" an account of the distribution of all the nation's incomes. When journalists equate GDP with "the whole economy", this is not only false; it also hides half of what is going on.