The Guardian/It’s time to retire metrics like GDP. They don’t measure everything that matters, by Joseph Stiglitz

Jay OwenBeyond GDP

“Ethical Markets has advocated overhauling GDP for decades, including with our three opinion surveys in 12 countries conducted with GlobeScan for the European Commission’s 2007 “Beyond GDP“ conference in the EU Parliament, on which I served as an advisor.  These three surveys in 2007, 2009 and 2013 found consistent overwhelming support by the public in these 12 countries for expanding GDP beyond money metrics to include actual indicators of health, education, environment.  See these on our Beyond GDP page at www.ethicalmarkets.com , as well as updates in the regular Newsletters from this European Commission “Beyond GDP“ continuing initiative at www.beyond-gdp.eu

~Hazel Henderson, Editor”

The way we assess economic performance and social progress is fundamentally wrong, and the climate crisis has brought these concerns to the fore

Sun 24 Nov 2019 06.14 ESTLast modified on Sun 24 Nov 2019 13.04 EST

‘And it should be clear that, in spite of the increases in GDP, in spite of the 2008 crisis being well behind us, everything is not fine.’

 

 

 

 

Photograph: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

The world is facing three existential crises: a climate crisis, an inequality crisis and a crisis in democracy. Will we be able to prosper within our planetary boundaries? Can a modern economy deliver shared prosperity? And can democracies thrive if our economies fail to deliver shared prosperity? These are critical questions, yet the accepted ways by which we measure economic performance give absolutely no hint that we might be facing a problem. Each of these crises has reinforced the fact that we need better tools to assess economic performance and social progress.  Read More