Thursday, February 17, 2005
PACIFICA COMMENTARY FOR FEBRUARY 3, 2005
PACIFICA COMMENTARY FOR FEBRUARY 3, 2005
HUMANE ECONOMICS
Hello, this is Blase Bonpane with a comment. They call it the dismal science. But economics would no longer have to be dismal if it brought in the human equation. What makes economics dismal is the fact that the gauges it uses are outdated.
It is like having the instrument panel of a Ford Tri-motor Aircraft on a giant 757. Gauges like the gross national product are not meaningful as regards human development.
If there are two people in the society and one person has a millions dollars and the other has nothing, the average income is $500,000. In spite of this average one of the two can be living in misery.
What is to be done? Create new and meaningful gauges. The most meaningful economic gauge is the Gross Social Product. Such a gauge does not measure income averages, on the contrary it measures the quality of life.
The gross social product would graph:
What is air quality this year as compared with last year?
What is the quality of water this year as compared to last year.
And we would similarly compare the quality of public transit?
What is the health care delivery this year as compared with last year? Who is still left out? How many homeless this year?
What about dentistry? Are half of the people in the United States still unable to go to a dentist?
What is the quality of public education?
What is the level of diplomacy practiced by the nation? How well does it cooperate with international agencies? How generous are we with international disaster relief?
What have we done this year to maintain international peace?
You see those who want to privatize the state of our union only deal platitudes and flights of fancy. Without a doubt privatization will increase the Gross National Product, and war will increase the Gross National Product. The only problem is that the gross national product has nothing to do with the quality of life in our country or the planet. In short, economic growth is not the measure of quality of life. the way to measure quality of life is to install the new gauge, the Gross Social Product. This gauge will identify war as bankruptcy. This gauge will lead us to distributive justice and thereby curtail crime. This gauge will take the word "dismal" out of the science of economics and make its professionals something more than a group of hired guns trying to protect individual corporations by every form of chicanery. This gauge, the gross social product, will identify the current state of the union as an ongoing fraud against the people who live here.
This is Blase Bonpane.
HUMANE ECONOMICS
Hello, this is Blase Bonpane with a comment. They call it the dismal science. But economics would no longer have to be dismal if it brought in the human equation. What makes economics dismal is the fact that the gauges it uses are outdated.
It is like having the instrument panel of a Ford Tri-motor Aircraft on a giant 757. Gauges like the gross national product are not meaningful as regards human development.
If there are two people in the society and one person has a millions dollars and the other has nothing, the average income is $500,000. In spite of this average one of the two can be living in misery.
What is to be done? Create new and meaningful gauges. The most meaningful economic gauge is the Gross Social Product. Such a gauge does not measure income averages, on the contrary it measures the quality of life.
The gross social product would graph:
What is air quality this year as compared with last year?
What is the quality of water this year as compared to last year.
And we would similarly compare the quality of public transit?
What is the health care delivery this year as compared with last year? Who is still left out? How many homeless this year?
What about dentistry? Are half of the people in the United States still unable to go to a dentist?
What is the quality of public education?
What is the level of diplomacy practiced by the nation? How well does it cooperate with international agencies? How generous are we with international disaster relief?
What have we done this year to maintain international peace?
You see those who want to privatize the state of our union only deal platitudes and flights of fancy. Without a doubt privatization will increase the Gross National Product, and war will increase the Gross National Product. The only problem is that the gross national product has nothing to do with the quality of life in our country or the planet. In short, economic growth is not the measure of quality of life. the way to measure quality of life is to install the new gauge, the Gross Social Product. This gauge will identify war as bankruptcy. This gauge will lead us to distributive justice and thereby curtail crime. This gauge will take the word "dismal" out of the science of economics and make its professionals something more than a group of hired guns trying to protect individual corporations by every form of chicanery. This gauge, the gross social product, will identify the current state of the union as an ongoing fraud against the people who live here.
This is Blase Bonpane.
