EPT![[image loading]](http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/236/1288709012884.jpg)
IS GDP the right measure of societies' progress? - Page 2
| Forum Index > General Forum |
|
jello_biafra
United Kingdom6642 Posts
| ||
|
vlf
Portugal170 Posts
| ||
|
reg
United States134 Posts
Your best bet is to measure how much purchasing power a national currency has, I would think. I'm probably wrong on that, though. | ||
|
hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On November 16 2010 14:15 geometryb wrote: gdp measures the amount of goods and services produced and is not a measure of wellbeing. Not all of them. If you pay for someone to clean your house it goes towards the GDP but if you do it yourself or with the help of a friend, it doesn't. I guess everyone knows GDP isn't a perfect measure but any measure of well-being will rely on some value judgements, some of which might be controversial. | ||
|
sleepingdog
Austria6145 Posts
On November 16 2010 23:35 reg wrote: I don't really like the HDI or the prosperity index. They're all stilted and tend to skew data. GDP isn't a good measure of prosperity either but I don't think any economist intended it to be. Your best bet is to measure how much purchasing power a national currency has, I would think. I'm probably wrong on that, though. This I also had classes where we discussed the HDI and tbh I was underwhelmed. Because the truth is, you just can NOT measure progress. If you stick with GDP you know the exact nature of your data, you know its limits and you now what your analysis will be able to prove and what it won't. Trying to "construct" an index by applying some obscure weithing-procedures can NOT be seen as an improvement in any way. It..."obfuscates" the fact, that you always have to deal with some sort of numbers, numbers that won't be able to tell you certain aspects of society. It's better to work with GDP and be honest about the limitied nature of your results. | ||
|
VIB
Brazil3567 Posts
- http://www.rianeeisler.com/rwon.htm She advocates for changing our current economic indexes with more human caring ones. She doesn't come to a consensus about each one index is the best to use. But she gives several good examples and real use cases. And asks society to help formulate better indexes than the ones existing today. Giving plenty of suggestions herself. She goes as deep as to argue that currently economics is being taught wrong in schools and colleges. And that human care should be taught in the same scope as economics. Really great book, I recommend it to everyone. | ||
|
Dogsi
Indonesia298 Posts
For instance, they all rank America poorly. They do so because America does not have univeral health care and has a high income inequality. The bottom 20% in America are worse off than the bottom 20% in pretty much all other OECD countries. However, this is not the case for the top 80% of Americans. Personally, I think the well being of the 80% trumps the lazy pricks at the bottom of the heep. | ||
|
jello_biafra
United Kingdom6642 Posts
On November 16 2010 23:49 Dogsi wrote: The problem with the alternative measures is that they all come with political bias. Most of them assume that socialism > capitalism. For instance, they all rank America poorly. They do so because America does not have univeral health care and has a high income inequality. The bottom 20% in America are worse off than the bottom 20% in pretty much all other OECD countries. However, this is not the case for the top 80% of Americans. Personally, I think the well being of the 80% trumps the lazy pricks at the bottom of the heep. It's not an issue of socialism vs capitalism because every country above the US in these rankings IS a capitalist country, it just so happens that they have a little more socialism than the US does. These lazy pricks you speak of, you mean the people who can work three jobs and still be forced to live in a trailer park where in any other Western country they'd have a good life? And to give you an idea of the scale of the income inequality the top 1% of the US population is richer than the bottom 95% combined. | ||
|
mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
GINI is actually one of the better (again should not be used alone), not because of any theorycrafting, but is seems in practice that equality in a first world country highly correlates with better outcomes in all those other concerns I mentioned earlier (crime rate, education,...). But both GINI and GDP are highly abstract and synthetic measures. They are nice PR thing, but as for real evaluation just use a set of direct measures, like expected life span, crime rates, education statistics, number of people below poverty line, other health care indicators, corruption,... . Simple people who think world is black and white will not like it, but it paints richer and more valuable picture. And if you reaaaaly need to you can just weight those indicators and get one number like HDI, but I see no reason to. | ||
|
Scrimpton
United Kingdom465 Posts
On November 16 2010 23:49 Dogsi wrote: The problem with the alternative measures is that they all come with political bias. Most of them assume that socialism > capitalism. For instance, they all rank America poorly. They do so because America does not have univeral health care and has a high income inequality. The bottom 20% in America are worse off than the bottom 20% in pretty much all other OECD countries. However, this is not the case for the top 80% of Americans. Personally, I think the well being of the 80% trumps the lazy pricks at the bottom of the heep. Like disabled people, people brought up in cultures that put less emphasis on education, the people that serve you every day? You can't discount 20% of the population so brazenly. Circumstance and chance can play a large factor in things. The man given many opportunities and support throughout his early life has a good chance of doing well for himself. You could take that same man at birth, and put him in a home where his parents dont care for much other than their next fix of whatever the FOTM drug is, and yes he can beat his environment, he might get through it all and do well.. but its terribly callous to assume "they brought it on themselves" Fuck, i troll post 99% of the time, but i dont think ive ever even joked about something as harsh, brutal and shameful as what you said. | ||
|
Scrimpton
United Kingdom465 Posts
EDIT: infact, its this sort of thing that feeds into exactly why the GDP is pretty shite when used alone, or when used for politcal agenda etc. It just doesn't represent the wellbeing of people.. And what have we come to as a people, when we start to casually discount 20% of a population, just a statistic... That's one in five. That's a ridiculously large amount of humans not doing so well... in what is considered a country of prosperity and freedom ^^^^^^ was meant to be an edit not a double post :S oops, | ||
|
hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
The Prosperity Index is quite an accurate measure. It takes wealth, economic growth, personal wellbeing, quality of life and various other factors into account. I was looking at the detailed ranking and it ranked the US first in the Health category. Even though it has lower life expectancy than many developped countries and one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in the OECD. In a sense this index seems to have the same problem as GDP. The US might have a great health infrastructure which is great (especially if you can afford it), but the overall level of health is still lower than in many developped countries. | ||
|
mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On November 16 2010 23:49 Dogsi wrote: The problem with the alternative measures is that they all come with political bias. Most of them assume that socialism > capitalism. For instance, they all rank America poorly. They do so because America does not have univeral health care and has a high income inequality. The bottom 20% in America are worse off than the bottom 20% in pretty much all other OECD countries. However, this is not the case for the top 80% of Americans. Personally, I think the well being of the 80% trumps the lazy pricks at the bottom of the heep. LOL, typical right-wing assumption that 20% of the poorest are lazy. Actually no, those 20% are more important for measuring quality of life than those 80%. Yes there might be some that are lazy, there are also a lot of those who just were not born as smart as others, or had bad luck, ... They are for the most part the only ones in first world countries that actually suffer. And any good measure of wellbeing is based on the amount of suffering. So no those measures don't have political bias, they are just based on things that actually should matter when creating social policy, and that is minimizing of suffering. | ||
|
Dogsi
Indonesia298 Posts
On November 16 2010 23:57 jello_biafra wrote: It's not an issue of socialism vs capitalism because every country above the US in these rankings IS a capitalist country, it just so happens that they have a little more socialism than the US does. These lazy pricks you speak of, you mean the people who can work three jobs and still be forced to live in a trailer park where in any other Western country they'd have a good life? And to give you an idea of the scale of the income inequality the top 1% of the US population is richer than the bottom 95% combined. If government spending accounts for over 50% of your GDP, which in most western European countries it does, then the majority of your economy is socialist. As such, stating they are socialist is far more accurate than stating their are capitalist. The second statement is utter BS. First off, no one works 3 jobs, unless you mean part time jobs. It's litterally physically impossible to work 3 full times jobs. Your third statement is flat out wrong. The top 1% accounted for 23% in 2009, accourding to the BLS. | ||
|
Dogsi
Indonesia298 Posts
On November 17 2010 00:02 Scrimpton wrote: Like disabled people, people brought up in cultures that put less emphasis on education, the people that serve you every day? You can't discount 20% of the population so brazenly. Circumstance and chance can play a large factor in things. The man given many opportunities and support throughout his early life has a good chance of doing well for himself. You could take that same man at birth, and put him in a home where his parents dont care for much other than their next fix of whatever the FOTM drug is, and yes he can beat his environment, he might get through it all and do well.. but its terribly callous to assume "they brought it on themselves" Fuck, i troll post 99% of the time, but i dont think ive ever even joked about something as harsh, brutal and shameful as what you said. I didn't "dismiss them" exactly. I stated that 80% of the population > 20% of the population. | ||
|
Dogsi
Indonesia298 Posts
On November 17 2010 00:12 mcc wrote: LOL, typical right-wing assumption that 20% of the poorest are lazy. Actually no, those 20% are more important for measuring quality of life than those 80%. Yes there might be some that are lazy, there are also a lot of those who just were not born as smart as others, or had bad luck, ... They are for the most part the only ones in first world countries that actually suffer. And any good measure of wellbeing is based on the amount of suffering. So no those measures don't have political bias, they are just based on things that actually should matter when creating social policy, and that is minimizing of suffering. I was making a point about why those measures are not valid. If you quantify an abstract, you are simply stating an opinion. How much income inequality equals how much income? Obviously a country with a GNI per capita over 40,000 a year is doing better than a country with a GNI per capita over 600 a year even if the former had a notably higher income inequality. OH, and btw, I'm not "right wing". I support same sex marriage, pro choice, ect. I am "left" in almost all social categories. However, I tend to support free market over socialism. Socialism, in my opinion, should only be applied when it is universally beneficial (infrastructure, education, ect.) or as a safety net (limited unemployment, providing for the disabled, ect.). It should not be a crutch. | ||
|
Flyingdutchman
Netherlands858 Posts
I've used the HDI indicator in some of my research, I'm not saying these things are useless, but by using them you are introducing certain ambiguities and measurement errors that are less of a problem with pure quantitative data, and have to adjust your conclusions accordingly. | ||
|
jello_biafra
United Kingdom6642 Posts
On November 17 2010 00:18 Dogsi wrote: If government spending accounts for over 50% of your GDP, which in most western European countries it does, then the majority of your economy is socialist. As such, stating they are socialist is far more accurate than stating their are capitalist. The second statement is utter BS. First off, no one works 3 jobs, unless you mean part time jobs. It's litterally physically impossible to work 3 full times jobs. Your third statement is flat out wrong. The top 1% accounted for 23% in 2009, accourding to the BLS. Well by your definition the USA is on the verge of becoming a socialist country. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html The actual socialist countries of the world are: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam... Okay I exaggerated a bit with the 3 jobs (unless you count part time jobs) but the mere fact that trailer parks exist kinda gets the point across... I actually meant wealth not income, don't have any recent statistics but in 2001 the top 1% owned 38% of the nation's wealth and the bottom 40% owned less than 1%. | ||
|
jello_biafra
United Kingdom6642 Posts
Switzerland: $372,692 Norway: $326,530 Australia: $320,909 Singapore: $255,488 France: $255,156 Sweden: $243,506 United States: $236,213 Luxembourg: $234,972 UK: $229,940 Italy: $226,423 Sorry for double post, mistake  | ||
|
mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On November 17 2010 00:23 Dogsi wrote: I was making a point about why those measures are not valid. If you quantify an abstract, you are simply stating an opinion. How much income inequality equals how much income? Obviously a country with a GNI per capita over 40,000 a year is doing better than a country with a GNI per capita over 600 a year even if the former had a notably higher income inequality. OH, and btw, I'm not "right wing". I support same sex marriage, pro choice, ect. I am "left" in almost all social categories. However, I tend to support free market over socialism. Socialism, in my opinion, should only be applied when it is universally beneficial (infrastructure, education, ect.) or as a safety net (limited unemployment, providing for the disabled, ect.). It should not be a crutch. I noted that I am talking about first world countries, where GDP is for all intents and purposes the same, for more read my previous post in this thread. So no 40000 vs 600. Well I am from Europe, so for me right-left divide is purely economical  . Yeah it is slight exaggeration, but hopefully you get my meaning Well I agree it should not be a crutch, but I would add public healthcare to that list as it is universally beneficial, and the reasons for that are the same as with education, infrastructure or social security. Actually often arguments used for those others are even stronger in case of healthcare. I consider myself economically on the "left" although I hate a lot of "leftwing" people with passion (not them really, their opinions ), because the worst thing that can happen to your case is when it is supported by ideologically-driven ignorants. I think free market is a tool, that should be used when appropriate, so it should be used when we have no way of doing it better or when doing it better is unfeasible due to human nature constraints or other real-world constraints. So I often support center or right-wing policies when they make sense and would probably be called oppressor of the working class by some left wing guys | ||
| ||
