Our political economy is faced with tremendously difficult choices…. overwhelming deficits and federal debt… unsupportable healthcare and entitlement payments coming due… military funding levels that were created when we were “the” economic super power… a crushing load of liabilities is coming due… and it comes due on the back of a seriously compromised financial system and household economies…
We can begin to view our problems in a more hopeful way… it begins with the issue of counting and identifying our resources and liabilities… we measure only cash recompensed activities in our economy… GDP … but so much more goes on… the raising of children, the care of the elderly, the transmission of knowledge, the protection and right use of clean resources and agricultural productivity… we have riches in abundance in our nation that are not in our bank accounts or stock portfolios… no… this abundance is in our hearts and creativity and reason…
Political momentum is building in certain nations to find new ways to measure the progress and failings of societies. ”Measuring the progress of societies” project at the OECD describes itself like this:
~~~ “Is life getting better? Are our societies making progress? Indeed, what does “progress” mean to the world’s citizens? There can be few questions of greater importance in today’s rapidly changing world. And yet how many of us have the evidence to answer these questions?
The Global Project on “Measuring the Progress of Societies”- hosted by the OECD and run in collaboration with other international and regional partners – it seeks to become the world wide reference point for those who wish to measure, and assess the progress of their societies.”~~~
And more importantly this project has lofty and criticial goals…
~~~” OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría has warned that unless a new generation of statistics is developed to measure social progress and well-being, people may lose confidence in institutions and in the capacity of governments to address their problems.
Speaking on the opening day of the OECD’s Third World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy in Busan, Korea, Mr Gurría said the way forward would require political will. “We have to restore trust – particularly in the wake of the economic crisis – and we can only achieve this if policy action has tangible impacts on people’s lives.” (Read the speech in full)”~~~
Franklin D. Roosevelt at his first inaugral talked about the severe economic challenges facing the country…
| “… Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.
Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. |
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| True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish…” |
Oddly we face the same situation as 1933 where the “moneylenders” have brought our nation to it’s knees and lent progressively more to the people… the over indebted citizens…
This is not gimmickry that is being proposed. It is a serious effort to acknowledge that many parts of our lives are not defined in monetary terms although they create the fabric and richness of our existence. Let’s measure the progress of America… we have come a great distance since the time of our founding… and there remains much opportunity and abundance ahead…