Remember, regarding basic resources; it’s not just water, it’s food, and it’s minerals and everything else that we export in order to make a profit so that we can afford to build services and infrastructure at a rate that the increasing population demands.

As the population increases, we need more of all of this to meet both the domestic demand and ever-higher profits from exports…. in order to just stand still….to just make the same per-capita returns.

That’s a big ask. In fact; a damn near impossible ask. Our mineral exports have been in boom phase for a long time. They are not likely to increase. Our agricultural produce isn’t going to increase very much at all. And our value-adding industries? The prospects of increasing output and profits that can keep up with the increasing demand of our rapid population growth are looking dismal to say the least.

<< …could you suggest a more useful measure than GDP per head... >>

GDP per head? But it is gross GDP that our politicians, pretend-economists and vested-interest big bizzos take notice of. They look at the gross increase each year. If they looked at the per-capita increase, they would get a very different and much more realistic impression of it. It would be pretty close to zero most years I would think. Sometimes positive, sometimes negative. And this is with all the things that contribute to it which just completely shouldn’t, such as increased economic turnover from illness, road accidents, etc….as well as massive economic growth spurred by rapid population growth which is much closer to neutral than to the big plus that GDP makes it out to be.

What we need is a GPI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_progress_indicator

< …the relationship between GDP and GPI is analogous to the relationship between the gross profit of a company and the net profit; the Net Profit is the Gross Profit minus the costs incurred; the GPI is the GDP (value of all goods and services produced) minus the environmental and social costs. >

Ok, I give in, Ludwig. If nothing I have said makes any sense to you, there is little point in repeating myself, since it would be a waste of breath.

The clincher that persuaded me to give up banging my head against the brick wall of your intransigence, was your response to my asking what you believed might be a more useful measure than GDP per head.

>>What we need is a GPI<<

A more ridiculous notion would be very difficult to find.

The benefit of GDP is that it only measures actual stuff. None of the areas that are included in the GPI definition you referred me to could possibly be objectively measured:

"...the 'costs' [sic] of economic activity include the following potential harmful effects:

Cost of resource depletion
Cost of crime
Cost of ozone depletion
Cost of family breakdown
Cost of air, water, and noise pollution
Loss of farmland
Loss of wetlands"

Not one single element has a real, identifiable, independently assessable value attached to it. Every single one is an individual, personal, gut-feel, emotion-driven judgment, which means that no two people could ever agree on an actual figure for it. How such a random number could ever be considered useful, let alone more useful than GDP, is a mystery only you have the magical ability to solve.

So, go on. Wave your magic wand (no, not that one) and tell us exactly how you would measure GPI, and how it could be put to practical use.

Pericles, you should have given in long ago. I get the feeling that you know that some of your arguments are really dodgy but you are loathe to back down on them. So you keep on fighting, and digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole!

You’ve pulled some woolly arguments out of the hat, but this one takes the cake:

<< A more ridiculous notion [than GPI] would be very difficult to find. >>

Because…

<< The benefit of GDP is that it only measures actual stuff. None of the areas that are included in the GPI definition you referred me to could possibly be objectively measured >>

( :>0

I’m amazed!

So you reckon that because we can easily measure the economic activity related to illnesses from smoking, car accidents, floods, continuous population growth and all manner of other things that should appear in the negative but which are added to GDP and totally made out to be positive, that makes GDP a whole lot better than a GPI?!?!

You’d rather have an indicator that tells us NOTHING about real progress and which is TERRIBLY misleading, compared to an indicator which would give us a pretty damn good idea about genuine progress!

Wow!

Yes, the components of a GPI are less tangible and more subjective. So what?

That’s got to be a WHOLE lot better than adding obvious negatives to the positive side of the ledger!!

Even if some of the components received weightings that I strongly disagreed with, I would still consider a GPI to be a thousand times better than GDP.

The fact that a GPI takes into account the sorts of vitally important quality-of-life and quality-of-environment things, some of which you have listed, while GDP just completely doesn’t, doesn’t mean anything to you eh?

Pericles, I am truly flabbergasted over your line of argument.

Flabbergasted you may be, Ludwig. But you're still relying upon emotion and fairy-dust, rather than actual facts we can agree on.

>>So you reckon that because we can easily measure the economic activity related to illnesses from smoking, car accidents, floods, continuous population growth and all manner of other things that should appear in the negative but which are added to GDP and totally made out to be positive, that makes GDP a whole lot better than a GPI?!?!<<

That is so ridiculous, it defies rational examination.

The problem is that you absolutely cannot "easily measure the economic activity related to illnesses from smoking, car accidents, floods, continuous population growth and all manner of other things"

Would you like to rephrase it? Preferably, explaining exactly how such nebulous, abstract concepts can be nailed down to a dollar value. You can't, can you.

>>Yes, the components of a GPI are less tangible and more subjective. So what?<<

Precisely because they are intangible (i.e. not measurable) and subjective (i.e allowing you to attribute any value at all that you can conjure up), you end up with a value that is completely meaningless. It staggers me that you cannot grasp this unbelievably simple concept.

So, back in the real world. If you have an "index" that is entirely subjective, and that applies an inconsistent measurement to entirely nebulous concepts, to what possible use can you put it? What action do you take when it goes a) up, or b) down?

Lunacy, writ large.

Any chance you two potential "love birds" can give us a break and continue elsewhere!!

Kipp, as painful as the latest instalment of the Luddy vs Perry saga is for you, and evidently is for him in his attempts to defend the indefensible, I am having a great time { :>)

It is right on topic. So this is precisely the right place to have this sort of discussion. And we are reasonably gentle with each other. The quality of the discussion is reasonably high compared to many that you see on OLO. So please feel free to join in!