What is a good measure of meaningful growth? Genuinely asking. I imagine all measures have pros and cons.
1. Look at income and consumption rather than production
2. Consider income and consumption jointly with wealth
3. Emphasize the household perspective (with this they seem to be focusing on more meaningful measurement of in-kind services and inter-sector payments, like government provision of healthcare and education, etc.)
4. Give more prominence to the distribution of income, consumption, and wealth
5. Broaden income measures to non-market activites (their examples here are things like childcare, where a shift from non-market childcare to market childcare over time can create the illusion of an increase in productivity)
Personally #4 is my biggest beef with GDP (and related measures like GDP per capita). Without some kind of adjustment for inequality, GDP can easily make bad things look good. What we need is not overall growth but equitably distributed gains; even a decrease in GDP could result in most people being better off if it occurred because of wealth redistribution.
Which mechanisms exist to redistribute wealth fairly?
- Intergenerational social mobility trend
Not doing great on either.
https://energyforgrowth.org/article/watch-countries-climb-th...