10
votes
Icelandic prime minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir wants to introduce a well-being economy – GDP becomes merely one of thirty-nine indicators of national progress
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- Title
- Lessons from Iceland on promoting well-being
I believe it's a real issue that GDP is used as a short-hand for national progress.
There are large issues with GDP, how different countries report GDP in sneaky ways to entice investors and others to view their economy as attractive, and how different measure of GDP don't actually make them directly comparable statistics.
As a short-hand, the measure is effective and useful. Just like The Economist's Big Mac index of informally measuring purchasing power parity (PPP) and consequently currency valuations.
As I see it, the real issue is that media and others only evaluate the success of countries based on GDP-related statistics. And that GDP is used too many places where it isn't relevant.
We need more uniform measurements of both the economies of the world, but also other aspects of society to measure countries by. To me happiness indexes, poverty indexes, education parameters, measures of equality and inequality, of development, population health, just to mention a few different categories, and international attention and standardization of those measures could lead to the betterment of billions of lives.
If you just want to read the indicators they (according to this PDF) are:
Society
Health
Education
Social capital
Security
Work-Life balance
Environment
Air quality and climate
Land use
Energy
Waste and recycling
Economy
Economic conditions
Employment
Housing
Incomes