So what? GDP is also increased with more wars, and other activities that enrich the elites and usually do much less for middle and lower classes.
I would like to see the “happiness index’ for populist vs. non-populist led countries. Since counterfactuals are used in the abstract, I will add one: normalize for each countries’ naturual resources.
I disagree. It seems that you are making GDP as a primary standard of living indicator.
Someone could strike gold/oil in one of those bottom ten countries, making a few people very rich, thus raising average GDP. Worse still, many of those places are in (almost) perpetual war, which brings everyone's standard of living down. This vast wealth might incentivize them to start fighting more. But look, GDP is up so they must be doing better!
It's funny, I commented about this a few months back saying happiness is a better indicator than GDP and people were so offended by the mere suggestion.
Having lived in Latin America and Europe, it seems absurd to think that GDP correlates with happiness. And besides, it's not like the world has become exponentially happier in the past two hundred years. Trying to measure happiness by assuming it's tied to factors like these is ridiculous.
After extensive traveling, I can say the best indicator of happiness is the amount of people per area who close their business on Sunday to eat lunch with their family.
the problem with an index like this is, that no matter how much you try to quantitatively measure happiness, "societal welfare" remains extremely subjective. put another way, whose definition of societal welfare are we using?
like it or not, GDP remains a very quantifiable and objective number.
>It's a well known fact that GDP per capita is well correlated with other indicators made by organisations with a liberal agenda, such as the HDI - so much that it is problematic both for these organisation, and for a usual neoliberal opinion (with diminishing marginal returns).
Why would that be problematic for those organizations?
Saying "GDP is correlated with happiness" (what you're saying) is a looong way from "Impact on GDP is the best metric for determining policy" (what would refute the 'liberal' GDP replacers).
Anecdotal: London's GDP was considered super high and growing. Why did citizens not experience any increases in happiness and well being? Because policy focussed on attracting super rich people, and a couple of them raised the GDP significantly. GDP is not a good measure of estimating the pleasure/happiness derived from of living in a country.
You know what, though? Roughly, people are happier in countries where they are wealthy enough to buy things they want. A lot of "alternative" measuring sticks are far more susceptible to political fiddling, or are meaningless. That doesn't make GDP the be-all and end-all of measuring how a country is doing, but it's not as bad as all that, either.
GDP is not just a number you know. If one were previously hungry and cold and are now well fed and comfortable, of course that affects happiness. Why do you doubt that?
On the more economic side, you have something like the Misery Index and its extensions (http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/misery-mena). Obviously composite indexes like these have their flaws too, but overall they are more comprehensive than GDP alone.
I would like to see the “happiness index’ for populist vs. non-populist led countries. Since counterfactuals are used in the abstract, I will add one: normalize for each countries’ naturual resources.
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