Stop Confusing Matters with the GDP

Friday, March 30, 2012

Radical changes are on the horizon. Thanks to our capacity for distance participation, in a few years we will have strong and efficient democracies that will give rise to the world that we all desire.

To set the possible scenes for tomorrow (foresight is an essential component of the qualities that characterize human beings) it is necessary to use very clear and accurate criteria for measuring “quality of life” in different parts of the world, so that our future designs may reflect exactly what we intended to build.

And the GDP is one of the most misleading indices of growth and the satisfaction of basic needs, because it reflects economic growth as a whole rather than the actual welfare of citizens.

What we need to know is not a country’s level of “development,” but rather how it is distributed, if it actually reaches each citizen, how it benefits native peoples, what investments are being made…

The World Bank recently underscored that the GDPs for Uganda and Ruanda are increasing notably, but it failed to mention that this is principally due to the mining of coltan in the Kivu region of the Republic of the Congo, which is being exported through Kampala and Kigali without the least benefit for the inhabitants of this region so rich in this superconductor mineral.

A few huge conglomerates and all of the GDP in so few hands…

There are many other examples: there are countries in Latin America that have registered an almost 10% rise in their GDPs… but this has very little impact on ordinary citizens.

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