By using GDP as the measure of wealth, governments end up negotiating trade deals like TTIP that favour big, exploitative, multi-national companies.

It causes poverty and increases inequality

It's a major cause of climate change

It supports TTIP, TTP and CETA

It encourages spending cuts and austerity
GDP drives the economic agendas of national governments, the European Union, the World Trade Organisation, the IMF, the World Bank and many existing and proposed free trade blocs. This means that, throughout the world, political and economic "success" is being measured in a way that does not relate to human need. It explains how the world can be collectively so enormously rich, while poverty, suffering, deprivation, overwork, mental stress, physical ill-health and environmental destruction are everywhere on the rise.





Senator Robert Kennedy - March 1968

Climate change
Extracting and burning oil, gas and coal creates GDP, but no allowance is made for the human and environmental cost of the climate change this causes.

Equality
Using GDP as a measure, an extra dollar in a rich person’s bank account is worth the same as a dollar that buys a meal for someone who would otherwise starve.

Refugees
GDP feeds wars through the arms trade, encourages poverty through low-paid, exploitative employment and creates conditions for political oppression.

Business
Because GDP measures only the quantity of money activity, and not its quality or usefulness, powerful banks and corporations enjoy big privileges.

Politics
Politics and money go together. When success is measured by GDP growth, governments are incentivised to favour the already-wealthy.