Economic News got you Down?
Let’s Change the Channel
I’ve heard it described as ‘recession porn’. In the media, you find an economic forecast or story that is awful and you run with it. It sells papers or gets people watching (kinda like the car wreck mentality).
Lately, however, we may have turned a corner. The Globe & Mail recently used the decline in the usage of the terms ‘depression’ and ‘economy’ in a Google search as a sign things may have bottomed out. A couple of weeks ago I was at an economic development conference where a keynote speaker suggested we’re not REALLY in a recession – if you compare us with 2002, a year more typical than the crazy and unsustainable boom years experienced more recently. Maybe these people are grasping for straws or maybe it’s the natural optimism that comes with spring.
One thing that the current economic downturn provides us with is a chance to
look differently at the way we measure the world, our communities and maybe ourselves.
In Canada we’re guaranteed ‘peace, order and good government’. Our American cousins get the much sexier ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ in their Constitution.
But how often do we actually stop and consider our own happiness. Lately, there’s been some great research that’s suggested our continued fixation on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a sign of how well we’re doing is about as wrong as having an all-lard diet. In other words, we’re watching the wrong channel.
In the early 20th century when GDP went up, society became better. People lived longer healthier lives, enjoyed more school and were generally happier. (Believe it or not, early economists were trying to make society happier.)
However, that relationship started to change in the west 50 years or so ago when people didn’t get any happier while incomes continued to rise. In fact, rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and mental illness all started to climb. It didn’t take long for people to start criticizing GDP as a bad measure of progress – GDP goes up when people smoke more, when insurance claims for vandalism are filed, or when more is spent on prescription drugs.
Economists and others searched for meaningful ways to answer ‘where are we?’ and ‘where do we want to go?’. ‘Can’t measure, can’t manage’ is a common adage in management circles.
There was some promise with Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI), which also tried to measure the well-being of people in a country. It tries to separate between good and not-so-good growth and factor in things like costs of resource depletion (deforestation), crime, family breakdown, etc.
In 1972, the King of Bhutan proposed Gross National Happiness (GNH), trying to ensure Bhutan, a tiny mountain kingdom above India, would preserve its unique cultural and spiritual features when opened to the world. GNH tried to balance four pillars: promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment and establishment of good governance. Bhutan has struggled with measuring this but it is, to its credit, the only country among the world’s 20 happiest countries, as documented in a well-regarded study by the UK’s Adrian White.
The Happy Planet Index (not the smoothie company that Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson co-founded) takes things a step further. It looks at well-being and wealth but then subtracts ecological footprint and adverse impact on one’s neighbour. Therefore, a gas guzzling country that fires missiles into the neighbourhood would score low. Canada and the US do not crack the top 100 in this.
The New Economics Foundation, a group based in the UK, are certainly shaking things up with the Happy Planet Index. They claim to do economics as if people and the planet mattered. They’ve caught the ear of many governments, including the Conservatives in Britain.
Sure, it’s interesting to play with numbers when they’re all rolled up at the national level, but do these measures of well-being help us in Nelson or the Kootenays?
My work at the community level on business vitality and community vitality has been trying to generate meaningful information from perceptions (do young people want to live here?) because there is no data.
That’s why I propose Nelson becomes a leader in measuring personal and community well-being as a way of REALLY charting how we’re doing and deciding where to go next. Nelson is quickly asserting itself as a leading community for food security, pesticides, and producing top-notch cultural products (community theatre, music, KCR’s radio programming). Why not be a front-runner on well-being (happiness) as well?
We could start by asking ourselves these key questions:
- How would you describe your overall quality of life/happiness?
- As a citizen in this community, how satisfied are you with the overall quality of life in it?
- In the past 5 years, do you feel it’s improved/stayed the same/worsened?
- What do you think will be the answer in 3 years?
Perhaps it’s time we changed the channel.
NOTE: If you want to see how your well-being stacks up against our European cousins’ check out www.nationalaccountsofwellbeing.org. The cool graph at the end is well worth the 15 minute investment.
Mike Stolte is Executive Director of the Centre for Innovative & Entrepreneurial Leadership (CIEL – www.theCIEL.com). He also writes as the Happy Economist (www.happyeconomist.com).
This article was originally published in the Nelson Daily News.
