The GDP is confusing us.

Looking at it from all angles it seems that the GDP is confusing us. The number of unemployed has nearly doubled during the previous two years. Unemployment has never been so severe since the time of the Great Depression.

Foreclosures have swallowed up millions of homes. Many more have forfeited their savings as well as pensions. Their retirement looks ahead sans any security.

The figures are alarming but they cannot measure he amount of human suffering – the uprooted families and lives that have been destroyed. The numbers do not even indicate the agony, the anger and sense of despair that has now become part of the psyche of the general people.

How can the economic performance of a nation be measured? For over 75 years it has been customary to look at the gross-national-product or the GNP and its sibling – the gross-domestic-product of the GDP. No other numbers have been more important to the politicians and the policy makers. The GDP has become the mantra for all nations to measure the economic health and to find out how an economy is faring. USA has been placed on top of the nations as regards wealth because it flaunts the highest GDP. The scholars and pundits all think that the higher the GDP – the more prosperous is the nation.

But in truth a new line of thinking has emerged. It opines that the GDP has been confusing us. It is an index in statistics that is sure to confuse us. Relying on it we have increased the misery of the people. Prior to his assassination Robert Kennedy explained this phenomenon.

He said that our GNP takes into count pollution of air, advertising of cigarettes and ambulances to “clear our highways of carnage”. It takes into account special door locks as well jails for those who break these locks. It does not leave out of its count the construction of forests and Nature swallowed up by a chaotic urban sprawl. It enumerates nuclear warheads, napalm bombs and armoured vehicles and the policy to battle street riots. Yet the GNP does not include children’s health, the standard of education and the joy of playing.

It does not count the charm of poetry or strength of marriages, the intelligence of public debates or the honesty of public officials. It does not take into count either intelligence or courage, either wisdom or knowledge and excludes compassion and devotion from their adding up. He quipped, “It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”.

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