Ronald Colman's Articles on Lions Roar

Is it true that the more we produce, the better off we are? Ronald Colman argues for a more human and sustainable measure of progress than simple economic growth, one that truly reflects what we value in life. There is a remarkable consensus, one that crosses all political boundaries, on the principles of what constitutes a decent society. We all value a clean environment. We all want to live in a peaceful and safe society. We need good physical health, strong communities, and free time to relax and develop our potential. We want economic security and less poverty. A society based on these principles would provide a good framework for spiritual practice and encourage us to become wiser, freer and more caring. Of course, no political party officially favors greater insecurity, a degraded environment, or more stress, crime, poverty and inequality. Why then do we see policies that promote those very outcomes? Why are we unable to create the kind of society we genuinely want to inhabit in the new millennium? Why are we unable to order our public policies to accord with our shared values and human needs? One important reason is that we have been getting the wrong message from our current measures of progress, in particular from that most watched of economic indicators, the Gross Domestic Product. All of us—politicians, economists, journalists and the public—have become hooked on its equation of economic growth with wellbeing and prosperity. Indeed, there is probably no more pervasive and dangerous myth in our society than the GDP’s materialist assumption that “more is better.” Look at the language we use. When our economy is growing rapidly, it is called “robust,” “dynamic” and “healthy.” When people spend more money, “consumer confidence” is “strong.” By contrast, “weak” or “anemic” growth signals “recession,” and even “depression.” Increased car sales signal a “buoyant recovery.” The more we produce, trade and spend, the more the GDP grows and, by implication, the better off we are. This was not the intention of those who created the GDP. Simon Kuznets, its principal architect, warned forty years ago: “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.” Our growth statistics were never meant to be used as a measure of progress, as they are today. All Growth is Not Equal. In fact, activities that degrade our quality of life, such as crime, pollution and addictive gambling, all make the economy grow. One of the fastest growing sectors of the American economy is imprisonment, growing at an annual rate of 6.2% a year throughout the 1990s. The O.J. Simpson trial alone added $200 million to the U.S. economy, and the Oklahoma City explosion and Littleton massacre fueled the booming U.S. security industry, which now adds $40 billion a year to the economy, with most sales currently going to schools. Is this our model of a “robust” and “healthy” economy? Gambling, a $50 billion a year business, is another rapid growth industry. Divorce adds $20 billion a year to the U.S. economy and car crashes add another $57 billion. Prozac sales have quadrupled since 1990 to more han $3 billion. Overeating contributes to economic growth many times over, starting with the value of the excess food consumed and the advertising needed to sell it. Then the diet and weight loss industries add $32 billion a year more to the U.S. economy, and obesity-related health problems another $50 billion. Similarly, toxic pollution, sickness, stress and war all make the economy grow. The Exxon Valdez contributed far more to the U.S. economy by spilling its oil than if it had delivered the oil safely to port, because all the cleanup costs, lawsuits and media coverage added to the growth statistics. The Yugoslav war stimulated the economies of the NATO countries to the tune of $60 million a day, and our economies will benefit even more by rebuilding what we destroyed. Measuring progress by the sum total of economic activity is like a policeman adding up all the street activity he observes. The woman walking her dog, the thief stealing the car, the children playing on the corner, the thug hitting someone with a lead pipe—all are recorded equally. Similarly, our growth statistics make no distinction between economic activity that contributes to our wellbeing and that which causes harm. Growth is simply a quantitative increase in the physical scale of the economy, and tells us nothing about our actual wellbeing and progress. Ironically, while we are so busy counting everything on which we spend money, we assign no value to vital unpaid activities that really do contribute to our wellbeing. Voluntary community service, the backbone of civil society, is not counted or valued in our measures of progress because no money is exchanged. And even though household work and raising children are more essential to quality of life than much of the work done in offices, factories and stores, they have no value in the GDP. We value the booming child care industry but we do not count unpaid child care, and so we do not notice that parents are spending less time with their children than ever before. Is this a sign of progress? Has Growth Made Us “Better Off”? Are we “better off” as a result of decades of continuous economic growth? Certainly many of us have bigger houses and more cars. Are we happier? A recent U.S. poll found that 72% of Americans had more possessions than their parents, but only 47% said they were happier than their parents. We are also less peaceful and secure, three times more likely to be victims of crime than our parents a generation ago. We are more time-stressed, and our jobs are more insecure. Our debt levels are higher and real incomes are declining for most. Child poverty is increasing and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Economists predict that, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, the next generation will be worse off than the present one. More dangerously, blind growth has undermined our natural resources, produced massive pollution, destroyed plant and animal species at an unprecedented rate, and changed the climate in a way that now threatens the planet. The more rapidly we deplete our natural resources and the more fossil fuels we burn, the faster the economy grows and, therefore, the “better off” we think we are. Because we assign no value to our natural capital, we actually count its depreciation as a gain, like a factory owner selling off his machinery and counting it as profit. What We Measure is What We Value. What we measure and count quite literally tells us what we value as a society. If a teacher tells her students that a term paper is very important, but it’s worth nothing in the final grade, the real message is that the paper has no value, and the students will devote their attention to the final exam, which “counts” for something. Similarly, what we don’t measure in our central accounting mechanism will be effectively sidelined in the policy arena. We may pay pious public homage to environmental quality and to social and spiritual values, but if we count their degradation as progress in our growth measures, we will continue to send misleading signals to policy makers and public alike, to blunt effective remedial action, and to distort policy priorities. Until we explicitly value our free time, voluntary community service, parental time with children, and natural resource wealth, they will never receive adequate attention on the public policy agenda. The obsession with growth and its confusion with genuine development has led us down a dangerous and self-destructive path. It is doubtful that we will leave our children a better legacy until we cut through the myth that “more” inherently means “better,” until we stop gauging our wellbeing and prosperity by how fast the economy is growing, and until we stop misusing the GDP as our main measure of progress. Just before he was assassinated thirty years ago, Robert Kennedy put it this way: “The Gross National Product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. The GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads. “And if GNP includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” A Better Way to Measure Progress. What is urgently needed are measures of wellbeing, prosperity and progress that explicitly value the nonmaterial assets which are the true basis of our wealth, including the strength of our communities, our free time, the quality of our environment, the health of our natural resources, and our concern for others. The means to do so exist. In fact, tremendous progress has been made in the last twenty years in natural resource accounting, social indicators, time-use surveys, environmental quality measures, and other means of assessing wellbeing and quality of life. We are capable of measuring our progress in a way that accords with our shared values and lets us know whether we are moving towards the society we want to create. After three California researchers developed a Genuine Progress Indicator in 1995, incorporating twenty-six social, economic and environmental variables, four hundred leading economists, including Nobel laureates, jointly stated: “Since the GDP measures only the quantity of market activity without accounting for the social and...

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