{"id":1477,"date":"2006-08-02T17:45:30","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T17:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=1477"},"modified":"2006-08-02T17:45:30","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T17:45:30","slug":"gdp-as-fairytale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=1477","title":{"rendered":"GDP as &#8216;fairytale&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To a new book club last night, where the topic of discussion was<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&#038;tag=philobiblon-21&#038;camp=1634&#038;creative=6738&#038;path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F1844071928%2Fref%3Dsr_11_1%3Fie%3DUTF8\">Capitalism: As If the World Matters<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.co.uk\/e\/ir?t=philobiblon-21&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=2\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/>, by Jonathon Porritt. <\/p>\n<p>It is an attempt, we concluded, to reframe &#8220;green&#8221; thought going back to the seventies into a form and vocabulary with which economists and businesspeople might be comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>In the discussion I managed to make some economists very uncomfortable (sorry!) by suggesting that GDP was a &#8220;fiction&#8221;, which another commentator later modified to &#8220;fairytale&#8221;. That might sound a bit extreme, but the point I was making is that it has as a measure no absolute value &#8211; it is just a collection of figures that everyone has agreed means something. (A bit like money.) Of course the obvious feminist example of this is that it doesn&#8217;t count unpaid (but clearly valuable) outputs of labour such as caring and housework.<\/p>\n<p>We were discussing the difficulties of creating\/agreeing a &#8220;green GDP measure&#8221;. My view on this is select a few sensible figures, produce a formula to plug them into and push it hard; don&#8217;t try to get a &#8220;perfect&#8221;, exactly balanced measure, because such a thing doesn&#8217;t exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To a new book club last night, where the topic of discussion was Capitalism: As If the World Matters, by Jonathon Porritt. It is an attempt, we concluded, to reframe &#8220;green&#8221; thought going back to the seventies into a form and vocabulary with which economists and businesspeople might be comfortable. In the discussion I managed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-politics","author-natalieben"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}