It just occurred to me that one of the (many) perverse things about using GDP growth as a measure of a society's is that it counts earnings as a "good" thing regardless of who they are going to. But here's my question: if a billionaire accrues, say, an extra couple hundred million dollars in wealth, how can we possibly see that as a good thing for anyone but the billionaire?
We are well overdue a more intelligent, humane measure of economic and social progress. The naive concept of "economic growth" should be abandoned for all developed countries, and attention focused on measures like the following: the distribution of wealth (more concentrated = less equal = bad), living standards of the bottom 10% (here is one area where growth should be regarded as good).
I also want to hear about other measures reflecting quality of life: average working hours (less is better here), traffic congestion (average commute time in major cities, for example), suicide rates, energy consumption/pollution per capita.
All of these should be considered at least as important as that naive and massively over-emphasized number that is GDP. And if they were seriously considered, I think there would be a significant reshuffling of relative rankings between different nations.
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