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.”
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I like the idea of it, even though I don't want to move to Bhutan.
4 comments:
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'?
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.
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/
I see that they've got something called GPI that's measured in some places (Genuine Progress Indicator). Nice website too.
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