Going beyond GDP

[freis72]

Most posts here missed the point of this video. This is about measuring wellbeing, not politics, and when it comes to measuring wellbeing there is no doubt that GDP is not enough.

[archdeaconj]

It's true, GDP includes the value of work done cleaning up industrial pollution, manufacturing and distributing pharmaceuticals for goodness knows how many ailments and illnesses caused by polution, treatment for cancers caused by chemical additives, persticides, herbicides, growth hormones in lifestock etc. It includes the money spent on adverts persuading you to buy what you don't need, or hadn't wanted, on competitive sales techniques, armaments, propaganda, and on and on.

[paligirl99]

there is nothing and were is the lunch

[paligirl99]

there is nothing hell this videio

[ConspiracyoftheRich]

wealth distribution IS the issue people should care about. I would moan about the other billionaires but some "libertarians" might claim they earned it fair and square - so check out "Jonathan Harmsworth" - he is a billionaire due to inherited wealth. LONG LIVE FEUDALISM!

[marcosabraam]

I quote 5 words: "There is no free lunch!"

[Mortarattack]

I think the most scandalous thing in the EU is the amount of money it wastes for farm subsidies!! Why does it have to spend 40% of its budget on something which employs something like 1% of its population?????

[serghey86]

because We don't want to eat GO food or cloned animals... so i don't care how much money thay spend on agriculture as long as the food is natural/organic/GO-free etc.

[declan3906]

Noam Chomsky once said "Australia was the only country in the world, consciously moving towards 3rd world status" as it digs everything out of the ground and sells it.

[eccemarco]

I agree whith what bgturk says about externalities. We've never calculated the externalities, nor the bad effects of economic development. When such GDP growth leads us to a non-sustainable exploitation of resources, how to take it into account? We are consuming all the petroleum, who is going to consider the loss of resources in the GDP calculation???

[psikeyhackr]

But they don't say anything about planned obsolescence and how much Americans have lost on depreciation of automobiles every year.

$300,000,000,000 per year, plus interest on car loans, plus car insurance.

What is NDP? They only officially depreciate CAPITAL.

tinyurl dotcom/2djdrr

[ponhand]

I am poor as hell, but do I care about the man's riches next door? sometimes yes but most of the time I live happily in my universe:) There were poor people all along the history for whatever reason my friends, and there were rich people too for the same reason. That's just life:)

[leungjameskc]

The world is going extreme

The rich goes more rich and the poor much more poorer

This will increase the conflict in the society and unstable atmosphere.

At the end it will burst into riot or ...something extreme that no common people would like to see.

[EvilShogo]

Shameful. Real people will not be jealous of others being wealthy as long as they themselves have a fair shot in the economy. In order for that to be possible, the free markets so criticized in this video (London example) are the precondition.

The so-called "gap" between rich and "poor" (more often than not actually the middle class) is a myth, just a way for anxious EUrocrats and other agents of socialism to air propaganda and destroy economic liberty.

[europeannation]

Long Live European Union !!!

[JWFau]

I guess that's one advantage the EU has over the US. They consider this sort of thing. They are not purely economic like the US is, they deal with other things.

[Deneva2000]

Could it be more red... YES! it could be in russian.

[esperanto82]

if red = well-fair concerned, then yes! europe is red! good for europeans!

[Swazi88]

The GDP is so misleading.

[bgturk]

The biggest problem with corporate capitalism is that it never takes into consideration externalities.

[SeanT228]

I agree, and a lot with the video, but as a student of free enterprise, if we inevitably raise the price mechanism. Also, with more and more redistribution of wealth the nature of entrepenuership is hindered. When people see a need or want, a market system is the most effective way to serve the customer. The price of a loaf of bread is $2.50 (quite universal might I add) this has been done not by the result of a government oraid program.

[dominican1000]

true!

[ReliableInsider]

Just to add to your point, who wants to live in the world where the poor are increasing in numbers and are increasingly unhappy? Where people turn to drugs to find happiness and to drug dealing in order to be able to afford housing?

Indifference to anything that happens beyond the next quarterly report leads to disaster.

An honest cost-benefit analysis of the corporation as a tool is the only way out.

[Epihash]

Long Live the EU