GDP is unscientific and unfair for poor people.

chang chang at public.shenzhen.cngb.com
Thu Sep 2 13:31:24 PDT 1999


Date: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 10:52 PM Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>At 09:15 PM 9/1/99 +0800, Ju-chang He wrote:
>>Do you agree that GDP is unscientific and unfair for poor people?
>
>
>No, I do not agree with either statement. I am not quite sure what you
>mean by 'scientific' but if that means 'assembled according to a clear and
>internally consistent methodology' - then GDP is scientific (of course, we
>all know that the implementation of that methodology varies from country to
>country, but that is a different issue). As far as fairness is concerned,
>the heart of the issue is the *distribution* of the suprplus rather than
>its overall volume. GDP was NOT designed to measure distribution, it was
>designed to measure volume - so the criticism of unfairness does not apply.

When there is a large GDP and a high growth rate of 9% a year, you will say that the economy is great and the financial officer will be proud of it. But I will still say that the economy is bad. It is because poor people's living standards haven't been raised. They don't have work. They have been left out of prosperity. There are still a lot of people suffering from cold and hunger. They can't afford to send their children to school, and, as a result, too many children are deprived of education. They cannot get medical care. If I say that the economy is bad, the government has got to make every efforts to raise the living standards of poor people. If you say that the economy is great, there is no need for the government to raise the living standards of poor people.

When there is a small GDP and a negative growth rate of -2% a year, you will say that the economy is bad and the financial officer will be ashamed of it. And then the government has got to make every efforts to raise GDP, not the living standards of poor people. So the poor people are kept poor for ever. Therefore GDP is for the rich to hoodwink poor people's eyes. GDP is unscientific, because it does not tell the whole story; and unfair for poor people, because it leaves them out of the prosperity.

Sincerely, Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA Welcome to My Homepage <http://sites.netscape.net/juchang/>



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