Beyond the Bailout: Measure What We Really Want |
Thursday Dec 18 2008
By David Korten | Website
Reprinted from "Sustainable Happiness," the Winter 2009 YES! Magazine284 Madrona Way NE Ste 116, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. Subscriptions: 800/937-4451
The only legitimate function of an economic system is to serve life. At present, however, we assess economic performance solely against financial indicators—gross domestic product (GDP) and stock prices—while disregarding social and environmental consequences. We are now paying the price for years of managing the economy for financial performance, which translates into making money for people who have money—that is, making rich people richer. It was not a wise choice. We now bear the devastating costs of this foolishness in the form of massive social and environmental damage and financial instability.
This would be a good time to start evaluating economic performance against indicators of what we really want—healthy children, families, communities, and natural systems. This would place life values ahead of money values and dramatically reframe the public policy side of our economic decision-making. Happiness, by the way, is an important indicator of physical and psychological health.
We might well continue to track GDP, a measure of economic throughput, as a quite useful indicator of the economic cost of producing a given level of health and well-being. When we recognize that GDP represents cost, not gain, it becomes clear why making it grow is a mistake. A number of researchers have been pointing out that happiness, as well as other indicators of human, social, and environmental health, have been declining even as GDP increased, but their appeals have been largely ignored. We continue to manage our economies to maximize the cost, rather than the benefit, of economic activity. The shock of financial collapse creates an opportunity to draw attention to this substantial anomaly. We will know we have turned an important corner when business news reporters happily announce, “It has been a successful quarter. Happiness rose by two points and GDP is down by one point.”
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
Tagged with: gdp happiness health well-being
RSS Feeds
