STOP GDP | Count wealth not money

Gross Domestic Product is the measurement that dictates the way the world's economy works. It measures all money-based economic activity, but takes no account of whether that activity is useful or destructive. Nor does it measure useful economic activity that is not money-based.

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.

THIS HAS TO CHANGE...

The time has come for a concerted campaign to get rid of GDP as an official measure and open the way to a new economy based on human and environmental wellbeing.

"Work on developing alternative measures of progress, beyond GDP, must receive ... dedicated attention."

Ban Ki-moon UN General Secretary

"GDP ... measures income, but not equality, it measures growth, but not destruction, and it ignores values like social cohesion and the environment."

OECD

"We must learn new ways to define the concept of growth for the 21 century"

Angela Merkel German Chancellor

"It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB - general wellbeing."

David Cameron UK Prime Minister

“We have to go back to GDP, the calculation of productivity, the value of things – in order to assess, and probably change, the way we look at the economy,”

Christine Lagarde Director, IMF

"What we measure informs what we do. And if we’re measuring the wrong thing, we’re going to do the wrong thing."

Joseph Stiglitz Nobel Prize-winning economist

Picture credits: Robert Kennedy - Photo by Warren K. Leffler [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Ban Ki-moon - By The Official CTBTO Photostream (UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons; David Cameron - By World Economic Forum/Moritz Hager (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons; Angela Merkel - By World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons; OECD - By OECDBrand (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons; Christine Lagarde - By World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons; Joseph Stiglitz - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Stiglitz_-_World_Economic_Forum_Annual_Meeting_Davos_2009.jpg

TTIP

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

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.