FYI You've seen the headlines, "GDP Up 5.4%." Good news, right? Not really. The gross domestic product simply adds up all the money we spend, and calls the results economic growth. Yet for years, economists, policymakers, reporters, and the public have relied on the GDP as a shorthand indicator of progress. In 1995, Redefining Progress created a more accurate measure of progress, called the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). It starts with the same accounting framework as the GDP, but then makes some crucial distinctions: It adds in the economic contributions of household and volunteer work, but subtracts factors such as crime, pollution, and family breakdown. We continue to update the GPI on a yearly basis to document a more truthful picture of economic progress. http://www.rprogress.org/progsum/nip/gpi/gpi_main.html also some excellent papers by Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute who did the GPI for Australia and visited NZ recently Papers by Clive Hamilton (see also the Australia Institute site): New Measures of Sustainability; the Genuine Progress Indicator for Australia, 20 November 1997 Economic Growth and Social Decline, Australian Quarterly May-June 1998 Economic Growth: The Dark Side of the Australian Dream, 24 February 1999 on http://www.geocities.com/~ubinz/IR/IRlinks.html(top half)
