Beyond that, there is no correlation between the wealth of a country and the reported happiness of its population. However, this correlation disappears after a country’s GDP per capita reaches a moderate level (roughly equivalent to countries such as Mexico or Turkey). This is true for subsistence level economies, where people who are barely surviving are not surprisingly the unhappiest. If GDP actually measured those aspects of life that lead to greater happiness, we should expect that the richer a country is, the happier its people are. In spite of this, the mainstream media unquestionably accepts the mantra of our locked-in ideology that economic growth, measured by GDP, is the societal objective to be pursued above all else. When researchers applied a measure known as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to seventeen countries around the world, they discovered that, although GDP has continually increased since 1950, worldwide GPI reached its peak in 1978 and has been declining ever since then. These alternative measures offer a very different story of the human experience over the last fifty years than the one presented by GDP. The Himalayan state of Bhutan has broken new ground by creating a “Gross National Happiness” index, incorporating values such as spiritual wellbeing, health, and biodiversity. Recognizing this, various groups, including the UN and the European Community, have begun to explore alternative ways to measure society’s true performance. The indicators we choose to define success become the things we strive for.” As one economist observes: “We get what we measure. The measure of GDP goes from being merely bizarre to dangerous for humanity’s future because of the fact that metrics have a profound impact on what society tries to achieve. In this bizarre system of accounting, toxic pollution can be triply beneficial for GDP growth: once when a chemical company produces hazardous byproducts twice when the pollutants need to be cleaned up and a third time if they cause harm to people requiring medical treatment. Driving to work in a car is GDP-enhancing, whereas cycling to work has no effect turning on the air conditioning increases GDP, whereas opening a window does nothing for it. When someone picks vegetables from their garden and cooks them for a friend, this has no impact on GDP however, buying a similar meal from the frozen food section of a supermarket involves an exchange of money, and therefore adds to GDP.īecause of this, activities that put more burden on the environment tend to contribute more to GDP. GDP measures the rate at which our society is transforming nature and human activities into the monetary economy, regardless of the ensuing quality of life. The most desirable habitat is a multibillion-dollar Superfund site.” The happiest event is an earthquake or a hurricane. In the description of one team of analysts: “By the curious standard of the GDP, the nation's economic hero is a terminal cancer patient who is going through a costly divorce. An oil spill, for example, increases GDP because of the cost of cleaning it up: the bigger the spill, the better it is for GDP. Anything that causes economic activity of any kind, whether good or bad, adds to GDP. The basic fault with GDP as a measure of a country’s performance is that it fails to distinguish between activities that promote welfare and those that reduce it. Simon Kuznets, the economist who invented Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the 1930s, warned that it was a “potentially dangerous oversimplification that could be misleading” and subject to “resulting abuse.” However, in the aftermath of World War II, as the world was gearing up for the Great Acceleration, GDP was formally incorporated into official policy making.
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