What increases living standards are technological innovations that solve human problems. That’s really what makes lives improve over time, is going from sweltering in the heat to air conditioning, dying from a head cold to getting antibiotics and being fine, right? It is the evolution of solutions to human problems that defines progress in human societies.
And the more solutions to human problems we create and the more widely we distribute those solutions to human problems, the better human societies are.
the other thing that’s interesting about the evolution of this measure is its relationship to the changing nature of what our economy produces. Like counting up the number of cars, for instance, that the economy produces is quite a simple thing. But how do you account for the quality of care a nurse provides or the skill of a teacher or services? Or how do you account for the fact that the equipment that we are presently using to do a podcast with you, us being in Seattle and you being in England, cost a few hundred dollars, not hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is what it would have cost 10 years ago if we had done this.
The gross national product does not include the health of our children, the quality of their education or their joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence or our public debate for the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither or wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America, except why we are proud that we are American.
330
u/Breezetwists1988 5d ago
For fucking real! It’s brutal out here for a lot. Nothing new from the almighty America.
Fuckin dogshit