“Ethical Markets welcomes this revision of obsolete GDP metrics, which begins to explore the world of digital assets and liabilities.
However, many more overhauls are necessary, particularly to create the missing Asset side of the accounts, which would more accurately value all the public goods, infrastructure, R&D and basic underpinnings of all advanced societies, as the investments maintaining and upgrading our long-term foundations on which all markets rely.
Such an accurate accounting system, balancing our investments and debt with these valuable public assets, could cut all countries using GDP metrics “debt-to-GDP-ratios” by up to 50%, with a few keystrokes! Simon Kuznets who invented GDP warned on its limited us as an overall indicator of “progress”!
The Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, with 12 aspects of quality of life, used many science-based metrics beyond money, were launched at the USA National Press Club in 2000. Still available on Amazon!
Ordinary citizens in 12 countries have repeatedly favored adding such science-based metrics of health, education and environment to expand GDP, as we find in our ongoing global surveys with Globescan, “BEYOND GDP“, which I first presented at the European Parliament’s Beyond GDP conference in 2007 www.beyond-gdp.eu and also at www.ethicalmarkets.com and www.globescan.com
~Hazel Henderson, Editor“
SUITLAND, Md. – BEA today released prototype trade statistics that show how global supply chains contribute to the production of U.S. exported goods.
Unlike traditional measure of gross exports and imports, the newly released data on Trade in Value Added distinguish between domestic and imported content in U.S. gross exports and trace the value-added contributions of domestic industries to those exports.
For example, in traditional gross trade statistics the export of a car manufactured in the United States would be attributed entirely to the manufacturing sector. These new statistics, however, further break down the exports of car manufacturing to show the various industries that contributed value added to that export, while also reflecting the value of imported parts by source region. For a car, inputs from non-manufacturing industries might include legal services, research and development and power generation.
These new prototype statistics can help answer questions such as:
- How important is the mining industry’s production in the gross exports of the car manufacturing industry?
- How much of an industry’s value added is purchased abroad in U.S. gross exports?
- What industries are most important in the production of car manufacturing’s gross exports?
- How dependent is an industry on foreign supply chains in the production of their gross exports?
These new statistics mark the first milestone in this measurement project, which was done in collaboration with the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics of the National Science Foundation. An in-depth review of the data, providing an analysis of the TiVA statistics and trends will be published in a subsequent white paper.