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On November 17 2010 09:21 exeexe wrote:
Yes replace GDP with happines of the people.
Tings that should be included:
Level of education
Level of pollution
Level of health
Level of freedom to express your opinions
Level of special goods available (like, can you only get mainstream conventional goods or are there alternatives?)
Level of genuine careness by the authorities
Level of genuine careness by the people
Level of employment and a healthy employment environment
Level of flexibility in the system (Are the rules to be followed strictly by a represent of authority or can the represent make individual judgements)
Level of feedback (so the politicians created a lawset full of mistakes. How hard is it to rewoke it?)
Level of engagement by the people (are the people lazy TV watchers or are they prepared to make a difference?)
If a country can have succes in all of this then that country will be full of happy people - that, ill tell you, is progress.
I've put in bold the only things I think are absolutely necessary for a people to be happy.
You do not need to be educated. You can live in poor conditions. You can be poor, you can have poor variety of products, and you can live in a place with poor work options.
One thing you will discover if you travel to these poor places (and I have), is that these people are happy. They don't have much, but as long as they have just enough they are much happier than the average "Westerner," and more than willing share.
In the West we have spiralling depression, anxiety, stress, and unhappiness in our lives. We all feel it, some more than others, despite our tremendous comparable wealth. We have iPhones and computers, cars and healthcare, but it doesn't make us any happier. We are less happy than the poor.
One day people will learn that wealth does not mean happiness. While homelessness, starvation, and war all make people very unhappy, moreso for sure than depressed Westerners, they become very cheerful, open, and full of life the moment these basic needs are met.
People ARE GOOD, and we don't need much to be happy. It's a pity that we, in the West, are descendants of a system of greed that has become dominant because it is greedy, and we think that this is the way to live. We take measures like GDP and say "if only these people in such-and-such undeveloped country had money, they would be better off." We do not understand that, despite having less crap than us, these people are often truly happier than we are.
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On November 17 2010 09:57 lowercase wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:21 exeexe wrote:
Yes replace GDP with happines of the people.
Tings that should be included:
Level of education
Level of pollution
Level of health
Level of freedom to express your opinions
Level of special goods available (like, can you only get mainstream conventional goods or are there alternatives?)
Level of genuine careness by the authorities
Level of genuine careness by the people
Level of employment and a healthy employment environment
Level of flexibility in the system (Are the rules to be followed strictly by a represent of authority or can the represent make individual judgements)
Level of feedback (so the politicians created a lawset full of mistakes. How hard is it to rewoke it?)
Level of engagement by the people (are the people lazy TV watchers or are they prepared to make a difference?)
If a country can have succes in all of this then that country will be full of happy people - that, ill tell you, is progress. I've put in bold the only things I think are absolutely necessary for a people to be happy. You do not need to be educated. You can live in poor conditions. You can be poor, you can have poor variety of products, and you can live in a place with poor work options. One thing you will discover if you travel to these poor places (and I have), is that these people are happy. They don't have much, but as long as they have just enough they are much happier than the average "Westerner," and more than willing share. In the West we have spiralling depression, anxiety, stress, and unhappiness in our lives. We all feel it, some more than others, despite our tremendous comparable wealth. We have iPhones and computers, cars and healthcare, but it doesn't make us any happier. We are less happy than the poor. One day people will learn that wealth does not mean happiness. While homelessness, starvation, and war all make people very unhappy, moreso for sure than depressed Westerners, they become very cheerful, open, and full of life the moment these basic needs are met. People ARE GOOD, and we don't need much to be happy. It's a pity that we, in the West, are descendants of a system of greed that has become dominant because it is greedy, and we think that this is the way to live. We take measures like GDP and say "if only these people in such-and-such undeveloped country had money, they would be better off." We do not understand that, despite having less crap than us, these people are often truly happier than we are.
Some one I agree with :-)
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On November 16 2010 14:10 muccer wrote:Show nested quote +On November 16 2010 14:02 ZapRoffo wrote:
No one with any credibility uses GDP as a measure for overall progress in the first place, at least not in modern times, and there are lots of other measures that are used.
GDP is a very specific economic measure that just tells how much "stuff" (more exactly: goods and services) a country produces/consumes. I disagree with your comments, most governments worldwide still use GDP as the main measure and politicians refer to it constantly as proof of success/failures. I am yet to see any government basing its policies on measures of citizen's well-being. So we might be talking about the shortcomings of GDP, but a substitute measure has yet to be developed.
The fact that the 2008 election was based on Healthcare reform somewhat proves that the US took
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GDP/Capita is the most consistent measure of well being when you attempt to apply it to the whole world. If you made a map that went from Blue(low) to Red(high) you would see that the red spots correlated very well to places where people live well (US, Western Europe, Small China Sea Nations) and places with poor living conditions (Africa, Haiti would be blue). Emerging nations would be well represented in shades of purple as well.
The problem with that metric comes when you try splicing who is best off out of the "well off" nations. In other words, it is a spurious problem at best. Who lives the best out of Americans, Germans, Swedes, and Japanese is a matter of opinion for most people. Some would rather have economic security and love Sweden, others want family loyalty and choose Japan, still others want extra freedoms and prefer America.
TL:DR Don't overcomplicate things by arguing who is better off between incredibly well off people.
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On November 17 2010 09:57 lowercase wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:21 exeexe wrote:
Yes replace GDP with happines of the people.
Tings that should be included:
Level of education
Level of pollution
Level of health
Level of freedom to express your opinions
Level of special goods available (like, can you only get mainstream conventional goods or are there alternatives?)
Level of genuine careness by the authorities
Level of genuine careness by the people
Level of employment and a healthy employment environment
Level of flexibility in the system (Are the rules to be followed strictly by a represent of authority or can the represent make individual judgements)
Level of feedback (so the politicians created a lawset full of mistakes. How hard is it to rewoke it?)
Level of engagement by the people (are the people lazy TV watchers or are they prepared to make a difference?)
If a country can have succes in all of this then that country will be full of happy people - that, ill tell you, is progress. I've put in bold the only things I think are absolutely necessary for a people to be happy. You do not need to be educated. You can live in poor conditions. You can be poor, you can have poor variety of products, and you can live in a place with poor work options. One thing you will discover if you travel to these poor places (and I have), is that these people are happy. They don't have much, but as long as they have just enough they are much happier than the average "Westerner," and more than willing share. In the West we have spiralling depression, anxiety, stress, and unhappiness in our lives. We all feel it, some more than others, despite our tremendous comparable wealth. We have iPhones and computers, cars and healthcare, but it doesn't make us any happier. We are less happy than the poor. One day people will learn that wealth does not mean happiness. While homelessness, starvation, and war all make people very unhappy, moreso for sure than depressed Westerners, they become very cheerful, open, and full of life the moment these basic needs are met. People ARE GOOD, and we don't need much to be happy. It's a pity that we, in the West, are descendants of a system of greed that has become dominant because it is greedy, and we think that this is the way to live. We take measures like GDP and say "if only these people in such-and-such undeveloped country had money, they would be better off." We do not understand that, despite having less crap than us, these people are often truly happier than we are.
If you're going to make a bold claim like money and happiness are uncorrelated (or even negatively correlated, as you seem to imply) you need to refer to some data to back up your claim.
All of the research I have seen and done on the topic implies the opposite. For example, the GSS (General Social Survey) polls people on their level of happiness (1, 2, or 3, with 1 being the worst) and also records the polled person's income, locations, marital status, employment status, etc.
You can use a type of a discrete choice regression model called ordered logit to determine if happiness and real income are positively correlated. And they are. In every single regression.
While GDP may not be a good indicator of welfare, PPP adjusted GDP per capita does a pretty good job (as other posters have already stated). Wealth is not the only factor that determines happiness, but with money you can buy most of the other stuff (ie education, health care, etc).
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imo only the economy, one cannot specifically depend on it to see a country atm, but it gives a broad idea at the very least
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This debate was so lazily thrown out by the OP that we have all sorts of people using poorly defined concepts while arguing different points so it's really a waste of time so far.
First of all, "well being" is a purely arbitrary conception. So is "quality of life". No amount of objective measurements will give you any idea of "well being". What GDP (PPP) per capita can tell you is, objectively, how industrious your country is relative to it's population. Nothing more, nothing less.
Another concept that's pissing me off is "progress". Like everybody's joys and sufferings were about the green arrow at the bottom of their preferred news broadcast. No, read a novel, get high or do something because you're dull spirited I'm sorry.
I don't even want to get started on "happiness". Sorry.
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You cant measure happiness. It never was and never will be.
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I don't think you can find a measure of progress that everyone will agree with. To some, the growth of a country's GDP is a sure-fire measure of "progress," while others scale peoples' freedoms and argue over which nation they feel is the most "progressive." You really have to define "progress" before you can make any headway. There's no hope in pleasing everyone.
As arbitrary as it sounds, I think the highest priority of any society should be the happiness of its people. That said, I believe a successful society is a happy society; "nothing more, nothing less."
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I think global GDP is a very good way of measuring human society's progress over the centuries. Also, one problem with national GDP/capita is that immigration can screw it up. If a Mexican with slightly above-average wages in Mexico moves to the US and makes 10% more, then both nations' GDP/capita goes down, yet the world is better off.
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On November 18 2010 02:26 StRa wrote:
I don't think you can find a measure of progress that everyone will agree with.
Exactly why this thread needs to be closed. The OP's post is so conceptually confused that it's not even worth starting the debate.
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On November 18 2010 05:06 Fyodor wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 02:26 StRa wrote:
I don't think you can find a measure of progress that everyone will agree with. Exactly why this thread needs to be closed. The OP's post is so conceptually confused that it's not even worth starting the debate.
I would not say that everyone needs to agree for a discussion to be productive. Not saying this one is, for me it was, because I found out some new things.
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Let me end this debacle of is GDP a good measure.
Friend asks you to eat a peice of dog crap for a million dollars. You think about how poor you are in college and agree to eat the peice of poo. As you gulp it down you figure it probably wasn't worth it, but a million dollars is all but in grasp. As you are getting the after taste of bacon bits you feel like it would only be respectful of your friend to eat some dog crap for the same price he offered you to eat it for. You point out a steamy pile for your friend to engulf into and he recently having to pay you a million decides to come up even, so he quickly eats it up for the million.
Now you ask what did these students accomplish? None of them received any money but only two steamy piles of crap. Well young sir they produced two million in GDP and a taste of glory-dog poo.
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On November 18 2010 05:56 McFly wrote:
Let me end this debacle of is GDP a good measure.
Friend asks you to eat a peice of dog crap for a million dollars. You think about how poor you are in college and agree to eat the peice of poo. As you gulp it down you figure it probably wasn't worth it, but a million dollars is all but in grasp. As you are getting the after taste of bacon bits you feel like it would only be respectful of your friend to eat some dog crap for the same price he offered you to eat it for. You point out a steamy pile for your friend to engulf into and he recently having to pay you a million decides to come up even, so he quickly eats it up for the million.
Now you ask what did these students accomplish? None of them received any money but only two steamy piles of crap. Well young sir they produced two million in GDP and a taste of glory-dog poo.
And an experience that will hold true in their hearts forever.
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Saying we are less happy than people in poor countries is a little premature. When you go on vacation somewhere you will always see a different picture than when you actually live there. Besides, aren't we forgetting Maslow? What you exacly need for happiness shifts. If you don't have a roof over your head and warm food on the table, you will become exctatic if you finally get that. After a while, you'll need additional stuff like self worth etc to full fill your needs. This doesn't mean you should idealize poverty and some minimalistic existence.
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Well young sir they produced two million in GDP and a taste of glory-dog poo.
People pay millions to watch sports, which gets added to GDP. Don't discount the social value of entertainment. A much better example of how GDP can be misleading is mobilizing a country for war. Lots of people get employed to make bullets and shoot people, but the end result is dead people. That, of course, has a dramatic effect on GDP in the long run, but in the short run, GDP can get pretty high.
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What is this thread asking, are you talking about when it asks for progress?
If it is asking about economic growth, in terms of the need to continuously produce more year after year, then GDP is a key way of understanding this phenomenon. In developed countries, this is most often what is referred to as progress. Other things, such as expansion of particular sectors/markets are also key to the progress in the nation. If the question is asking about economic development, or a continous rise in quality of living (which is not the same thing as an increase of stuff - see Stalin's gigantomania), then other statistics, such as the number of doctors per head, number of practical appilications of theoretical sciences, or amount of roads in a country. GDP does not take into account a practical increase in standard of living, and is a weak link at best when trying to connect an increase of stuff to a more educated, longer lasting, effective society. The question is actually kinda ambigous in that regard.
Purge
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On November 18 2010 12:42 Purge wrote:
What is this thread asking, are you talking about when it asks for progress?
If it is asking about economic growth, in terms of the need to continuously produce more year after year, then GDP is a key way of understanding this phenomenon. In developed countries, this is most often what is referred to as progress. Other things, such as expansion of particular sectors/markets are also key to the progress in the nation. If the question is asking about economic development, or a continous rise in quality of living (which is not the same thing as an increase of stuff - see Stalin's gigantomania), then other statistics, such as the number of doctors per head, number of practical appilications of theoretical sciences, or amount of roads in a country. GDP does not take into account a practical increase in standard of living, and is a weak link at best when trying to connect an increase of stuff to a more educated, longer lasting, effective society. The question is actually kinda ambigous in that regard.
Purge
Ok, let me try again. What I am saying is that GDP has been used, very much, as a measure of a societies' progress. We have used it as a proxy for doing well. If GDP was increasing, everyone was supposed to be happier. This is NOT the case, as many above have commented. My question is, if we are moving away from GDP, what should be measured to determine whether a country, and its citizens, are progressing/doing better? Should it be one measure for all countries, or a different set of measures for each country. What are your thoughts? What do you think of what the OECD is doing? (outlined here http://www.visionofhumanity.org/news/efforts-to-expand-replace-g-d-p-as-a-measure-of-progress/)
Today I came across another piece on the Lowy blog:
In the UK, David Cameron's government is reportedly planning to start measuring GWB (general wellbeing) as well as the more traditional metric of GDP.
There's actually a fairly long history of discontent with GDP as a summary statistic. Economists and statisticians are well aware of its many drawbacks, including the absence of non–market activities, problems with the measurement of services, the treatment of externalities and of non–renewable resources, and so on. Despite what some critics allege, I reckon that many economists' general attitude towards relying on GDP as a statistic is similar to Churchill's views on democracy: it's the worst measure we have, except for all of the others.
There's also been a (more recent) history of discontent with using GDP as a proxy for measuring economic well–being more generally. One strand of this has focused on the measurement of happiness, although the general critique has been much broader. Last year, for example, a commission of eminent economists, including Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, produced a detailed report for the French government, looking at the shortcomings of GDP and canvassing some alternatives.
So, will the UK government's announcement be welcomed by all those GDP–sceptics out there? Since context is everything, quite possibly not.
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On November 18 2010 14:59 muccer wrote:
What I am saying is that GDP has been used, very much, as a measure of a societies' progress. We have used it as a proxy for doing well. If GDP was increasing, everyone was supposed to be happier. This is NOT the case, as many above have commented.
Actually this is exactly what's going on. Countries that have higher GDP's have higher levels of life satisfaction. Additionally, gains in GDP correspond directly to gains in happiness. Unfortunately, we can't compare happiness levels now to happiness before the Industrial Revolution, but the majority of economic literature concerning this question in recent years seems in agreement that GDP is positively related to happiness. I've provided evidence for this previously, and the posters you refer to have provided no evidence thus far.
I'm not here to say GDP is a perfect measure of progress or that it is impossible to imagine a scenario where GDP fails. Instead, I'm pointing out that GDP is a pretty reasonable estimate in the real-world for well-being. There's no impenetrable reasoning why this should be the case, but it makes sense on some level that wealth can alleviate pain and suffering, and can improve one's quality of life. But regardless of whether or not the theory behind it makes complete sense, as an empirical matter GDP remains a reasonable approximation for a society's well-being.
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I could have gone into lecture mode, but I decided against since it involves a lot of stuff that most people don't have the patience for.
Is GDP the "right" measure of progress?
No. In fact, when talking about progress most economists don't even bother with GDP, they talk about RGDP (Real GDP) and the GDP Deflater. That is only if they want to talk about GDP. In fact, I'm surprised that a thread with 90+ posts, not one person has mentioned RGDP, it's as if no one here has taken economics (that's how it appears, not trying to slight any previous posters). I also haven't seen any mention of GDP=Total Income, or GDP = C (consumer spending) + I (business investment spending) + G (government spending) + (X-M) (Trade situation, i.e. imports vs. exports). The GDP of a nation is a valuable statistic that can't be ignored. What's more, the extension of GDP, i.e RGDP, is even more valuable because it accounts for inflation.
Now, this is a pretty complicated discussion that involves knowing a lot about macroeconomics, but in my opinion I feel that RGDP, not GDP, combined with the CPI-U (Consumer Price Index of Urban Consumers) is the best way of measuring economic progress, as well as the CPI and GDP Deflater.
If anyone wants info on this go to the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics websites and you'll see the values of all these fancy acronyms I brought up.
TL;DR GDP is not the right measure of progress, the RGDP + CPI-U is.
PS Consumer spending accounts for 70% of GDP/RGDP in the US, just to give some data for all the capitalist vs. socialist peeps out there.
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EPT
