Caraka

god is dead! long live god!

By caraka at 5:05 pm on Tuesday, October 31, 2006

The Stern Review published today in the UK is a must read for anyone with a future. For mere mortals and all those climate change deniers who have been sooo quiet since Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth came out, the Summary of Conclusions might be more than enough reading on the subject. It is a primer and call to arms for all of humanity to get serious or pay a deadly price - in our lifetimes. It still pays homage to the god of perpetual growth, but recognises that the god of growth is dead unless we do something about it. Now.

Thus a sacrilege is avoided but the truth is still spoken. The church of the GDP, self proclaimed as the measure of all that is good, has suffered a serious blow. It’s original prophet, Simon Kuznets, said in 1962 that “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP … goals for ‘more’ growth should specify of what and for what”. Having created the measure, he knew its limitations. His acolytes, like those of all faiths, were not content with his caveat. Instead, Thatcher, Reagan and a legion of economists set out to make GDP the ultimate measure of what is good. The worldwide conversion was swift, with opposition parties soon singing the same tune.

Politicians are obsessed with “economic growth” as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Tony Blair said it would be the “judge and jury” of Labour’s success. But GDP is at best a crude measure of progress. In effect it assumes that families, communities and the natural environment add nothing to economic well-being. Their damage or even destruction could count as growth.

Geoff Mulgan, now with the UK Social Exclusion Unit, said in 1995: “In previous centuries nations measured their success by military power. For most of this century they measured it by their economic power and their ranking in GDP tables. By 2020…our obsession with growth and GDP will seem as odd as the 19th century fetishisation of armies does to us now. Increasingly, societies will be judged by very different criteria: by quality not quantity, well-being not income, balance not growth”.

I may have mentioned this in one or two posts before. The Genuine Progress Indicator, or GPI, is just one of the viable alternatives for the GDP. It takes into consideration all the things that Goeff Mulgan mentions above, and more. Perhaps we should vote for parties that support introducing an alternative to the GDP. That way we’ll be taking a step in the right direction and be able to measure it. Thanks to the Friends of the Earth , who put many of these quotes together on their website, plus a whole lot more!