Joseph Stiglitz - quit relying on GDP, include "daily life" factors when evaluating growth

[housewolf]

In a provocative new study, a pair of Nobel prize-winning economists, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, urge the adoption of new assessment tools that incorporate a broader concern for human welfare than just economic growth. By their reckoning, much of the contemporary economic disaster owes to the misbegotten assumption that policy makers simply had to focus on nurturing growth, trusting that this would maximize prosperity for all.

“What you measure affects what you do,” Mr. Stiglitz said Tuesday as he discussed the study before a gathering of journalists in New York. “If you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing.”

According to the report, much of the world has long been ruled by an unhealthy fixation on swelling the gross domestic product, or the quantity of goods and services the economy produces. With a singular obsession on making G.D.P. bigger, many societies — not least, the United States — failed to factor in the social costs of joblessness and the public health impacts of environmental degradation. They allowed banks to borrow and bet unfathomable amounts of money, juicing the present by mortgaging the future, thus laying the ground for the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

read the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/business/economy/23gdp.html?ref=business

[Hello_Kitty]

1. I really like Joseph Stiglitz. eom

[BlooInBloo]

2. Until he or someone else provides a better quantitative method, it's somewhat moot...

"Indeed, the difficulty comes in turning these general principles into new means of measurement. The report notes that its authors concur on the big picture, but diverge on the methodologies to be employed when it comes to factoring in the value of a better education and cleaner skies.

The old mode of measurement has taken a beating, and yet the new one, it seems, is still a work in progress. "

[OwnedByFerrets]

3. A truer headline has never been written. GDP is the WORST way

to evaluate growth.
A good example is this: Every time a drunk drives and kills someone, GDP increases. Just think about it. You can apply this rule to most "bad" things that happen, including wars that build killing machines.

[ashling]

4. Article from the Nation

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/09/24/opinion/opinion_30112933.php

[yurbud]

5. Why didn't Obama put him in charge of economic policy instead the recycled degenerates of Wall St?