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Editorial

Replace 'GDP': Toward a new Political Economy of Social Justice and Environmental Protection

It is about time that responsible members of the economics profession begin a constructive dialogue on the relative merits of the continued use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), along with corresponding Leading Economic Indicators. Arguably, GDP should be replaced. It is a highly dysfunctional measurement context. The GDP measurement context pivots on a highly reductionist and materialistic conception of economic development. The economics profession maintains this economic performance index to the detriment of human civilization. Indeed, GDP manifests the economic sensibilities of the colonial European powers, and the United States in the nineteenth century. Such a political economic governance context ignored the plight of the poor, and viewed the environment to be a 'great toilet' for the pollution of "industry", that represented progress to the elites.

Replace 'GDP': Toward a new Political Economy of
Social Justice and Environmental Protection  

America was supposed to be a 'great experiment in democracy', that would contrast with the colonial hypocrisies of the European aristocracies. Through the guidance of GDP, America is losing itself, into the very prism of political economic colonialism and hegemony, that the colonists in the Thirteen Colonies had rebelled against. The result of this GDP prism, in contemporary America, is the defiling of America. This defiling, encompasses its worsening ghettos, that harbour social despair and alienation, where people are often without adequate food, clothing, shelter, and basic healthcare; to destroyed forests... all under periods of supposedly booming GDP-measured 'growth' as the economic public policy making guidance context.

The GDP context, is singularly turning America away from its supposedly progressive enlightened revolutionary democratic foundations, into the very prism of elitist-oriented political economic governance. It was such an elitist context that the colonists in the Thirteen Colonies rebelled against, in the American Revolution, leading to the Declaration of Independence.

The promise of America, as the 'land of opportunity' for all Americans, and as an enlightened Superpower as championed by FDR, toward support for vital global social justice and toward vital environmental protection, is yet to be fulfilled. However that result pivots on propelling the economic profession, and the resultant conditioned framework of economic public policy-making, beyond service to a 'capitalistocracy of GDP'. 'Economics' needs to move beyond rationalizing worship in a 'Church of Mammon'.

When is the economics profession going to elevate itself from its apparent primitive state? In such a primitive focus, the practice of economic analysis induces societies via a GDP emphases and accompanying targets, to achieve a highly corporate-focused "growth" (through the pursuit of insatiable commercial "profit") at whatever human social and environmental costs. The books entitled Quantuum Economics: Wage Slavery or the Quality-of-Life? Choices in "the New Economy", ISBN: 1894839609, and Capitalism is Not Democracy, ISBN: 1894934636, present a rejuvenated Human Development economic developmental paradigm.

In these books, a Quality-of-Living Index (QLI) is presented and suggested as a replacement for 'GDP'. Whereas QLI fully integrates social and environmental costs in the economic development consideration, GDP totally ignores such vital costs on human civilization. QLI provides an innovative approach to redressing Global Warming, and other related vital social, and environmental issues, within a rejuvenated index of economic development context, that would go beyond GDP. Global efforts to embrace the Kyoto Accord (adopted by many nations, that include Canada; but not for example, the United States and China which are among the highest contributors to Greenhouse emissions); and relief of worsening documented poverty under Corporate Globalization, continue to be frustrated. This frustration will continue as long as industrial and other nations rely on an economic index, that promotes a system of public policies that create environmental destruction, and also profound economic disparity, which undermines the quality of human survival.

Governments must be lobbied internationally, to replace the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Index with the rejuvenated Quality-of-Living (QLI) Index!

Get the books entitled Quantuum Economics: Wage Slavery or the Quality-of-Life? Choices in the "New Economy", 2003, or 'Capitalism is Not Democracy', 2005, as a gift, with a donation pledge to Agora Book Cafe.

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