Maybe this should help us form a balanced outlook....
It is time the world kills the GDP and the old Economics need to evolve with the time!
(Nobel-winning economist) Stiglitz would like gross domestic product (GDP) to go the way of the pyramid inch and the Arabic mile. "The world is facing three existential crises, a climate crisis, an inequality crisis and a crisis in democracy", he writes. "Yet the accepted ways by which we measure economic performance give absolutely no hint that we might be facing a problem".
He's right! In the US, GDP figures and continue with the status quo. GDP gives no hint of environmental degradation or resource depletion, nor inequality, middle-class suffering or lower standards of living. "If growth is not sustainable because we are destroying the environment and using up scarce natural resources our statistics should warn us", he says.
"It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social performance".
His new book, Measuring What Counts : The Global Movement for Well-Being, co-written with French economists Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Martine Durand, provides a blueprint for how countries can use more appropriate matrics that account for details such as sustainability and - imagine! - how people feel about their lives.
This all began a decade ago, when Nicolas Sarkozy, the then President of France, asked Stiglitz and fellow Nobel winner Amartya Sen, along with Fitoussi, to set up a commission studying GDP. They published their early deliberations in a book called Mismeasuring Our Lives.
From an economist's perspective, metrics are the key to everything.
"If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing", writes Stiglitz.
Tailpiece.
It was a quiet Saturday. Was glad that the government has postponed the introduction to FASTAGs on all vehicles by a fortnight. It will, now, come into force with effect from 15 Dec! Told Vishnu to tell his contact man to get me mine, the delay of a few days, notwithstanding!
It is time the world kills the GDP and the old Economics need to evolve with the time!
(Nobel-winning economist) Stiglitz would like gross domestic product (GDP) to go the way of the pyramid inch and the Arabic mile. "The world is facing three existential crises, a climate crisis, an inequality crisis and a crisis in democracy", he writes. "Yet the accepted ways by which we measure economic performance give absolutely no hint that we might be facing a problem".
He's right! In the US, GDP figures and continue with the status quo. GDP gives no hint of environmental degradation or resource depletion, nor inequality, middle-class suffering or lower standards of living. "If growth is not sustainable because we are destroying the environment and using up scarce natural resources our statistics should warn us", he says.
"It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social performance".
His new book, Measuring What Counts : The Global Movement for Well-Being, co-written with French economists Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Martine Durand, provides a blueprint for how countries can use more appropriate matrics that account for details such as sustainability and - imagine! - how people feel about their lives.
This all began a decade ago, when Nicolas Sarkozy, the then President of France, asked Stiglitz and fellow Nobel winner Amartya Sen, along with Fitoussi, to set up a commission studying GDP. They published their early deliberations in a book called Mismeasuring Our Lives.
From an economist's perspective, metrics are the key to everything.
"If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing", writes Stiglitz.
Tailpiece.
It was a quiet Saturday. Was glad that the government has postponed the introduction to FASTAGs on all vehicles by a fortnight. It will, now, come into force with effect from 15 Dec! Told Vishnu to tell his contact man to get me mine, the delay of a few days, notwithstanding!
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