James Boyce: The GDP is the most commonly cited economic metric but it doesn’t tell us what we need to know.
Triple Crisis Welcomes Your Comments. Please Share Your Thoughts Below.
James Boyce: The GDP is the most commonly cited economic metric but it doesn’t tell us what we need to know.
Triple Crisis Welcomes Your Comments. Please Share Your Thoughts Below.
[…] Your Comments. Please Share Your Thoughts Below. Article by TripleCrisis. Read entire story here. Tags 2012 Black categories Climate crime crisis case studies crisis communications crisis […]
While it would be good to find other measures, the effects of doing so should not be exaggerated. The numbers of hungry people in the world have been measured for many decades and the numbers are still appalling. Climate change too has been measured, but it hasn’t impressed politicians or citizens enough to take radical action. Spain has 56% youth employment etc…
GDP as an indicator wasn’t developed until the 1930s, and clearly economies grew rapidly also without having any GDP targets. In reality, politicians are unable to influence economic growth rates as much as they pretend to.
Efforts to analyze the economy with alternative measures need to be kept separate from the terms and possibilities of managing the economy in that way. Companies don’t try to increase the GDP but try to increase their profit or simply survive the competition. Even when they speak about ‘triple bottom line’ and other niceties, increasing the profit will always be the overarching driver. And this will remain the same even if societies trash GDP as a measure. Similarly, consumers don’t buy more stuff to contribute to the GDP but because it gives status or satisfaction or simply because they have money to spend, ‘money burning a hole in my pocket’ as the saying goes. The effect of these measurements is on the political discourse mainly, while a change in measurement will hardly affect the behaviour of economic agents. Read more on http://gardenearth.blogspot.se/2010/11/how-we-measure.html
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