Thursday, December 22, 2005

What a concept!

Thanks to my husband for this link to this article on a country which measures "Gross National Happiness" instead of Gross Domestic Product.
Ask almost anyone in government, “How’re we doin’?” and they’ll most likely pull out a rack of financial graphs as thick as a safe deposit box and start spouting consumer spending figures, productivity statistics, and other economic mumbo-jumbo related to Gross Domestic Product. But ask the same question in Bhutan, and you’ll get a much different response. In this tiny nation, GDP has been replaced with a social barometer called Gross National Happiness, and the result is a groundbreaking experiment in better ways to measure that crazy little thing called “progress.”

Read the article...

I like the idea of it, even though I don't want to move to Bhutan.

4 comments:

Neil Shakespeare said...

Geez, that's a lot of pressure. Does it have to go up like 3% or year or so to be considered successful? do they have 'happiness inflation'?

Blueberry said...

I could see Bush asking the question, "Is Americans happy?"

Probably not the best-advised question for him to ask now.

Yes, 3% a year sounds good, and happiness inflation would eventually result in a glut situation, an overload. I suppose they could fix that by starting another war.

Anonymous said...

Adbusters re-printed an article about Bhutan by Nadia Mustafa that appeared in Time on January 10, 2005. It is part of Adbuster's True Cost Economics campaign.
http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/truecosteconomics/

Blueberry said...

I see that they've got something called GPI that's measured in some places (Genuine Progress Indicator). Nice website too.