by Tamaal Ghosh

Created on: October 02, 2009   Last Updated: October 06, 2009

G.D.P. : Another Fine Mess.

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

Albert Einstein

Perhaps catalysed by the collapse of Western-style capitalism and well aware of similar ructions in Asia, there is a growing and widespread call to implement an universally-recognised index of a nation's health to replace the old and seemingly-decrepit Gross National Product (GNP).

First developed and established by United States and United Kingdom economists in the Depression years of the 1930's, the United Nations System of National Accounts (U.N.S.N.A.) was intended to measure levels of employment only.

With the advent of war on a global scale, however, all belligerent nations eventually demanded to know the quantity of each bolt, bullet and bomb being manufactured. This led to a part of the U.N. measure, G.D.P., being blown out of all proportion, according to critics.

The U.N.S.N.A. has been extolled by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division as "...a coherent, consistent and integrated set of macroeconomic accounts, balance sheets and tables based on a set of internationally agreed concepts, definitions, classifications and accounting rules. It provides a comprehensive accounting framework within which economic data can be compiled and presented in a format that is designed for purposes of economic analysis, decision-making and policy-making."

Former New Zealand M.P. (and renowned floor-crossing maverick), Marilyn Waring - one of G.D.P.'s most persistent and vociferous detractors - describes in more digestible terms as "... the internationally-recognised system for measuring and recording the values that economic theorists have observed."

Ms Waring has two main objections to the universal adherence to the U.S.N.A. in general and the adulation of G.D.P. in particular.

First, that it takes no account of numerous valuable assets and activities such as rivers and forests (not under harnessed for gain), caring for one's own children, food and vegetables husbanded by one's family and hunting, fishing and trapping one's own food.

In many (if not most) countries, the 'working' population - that is, those engaged in financially-remunerative activities - is astonishingly small; Canada, for instance, has just over half of its poulace is "gainfully employed". These are within the "production boundary" - areas measured or counted in national accounts.

What, then, of does one make of the children and the

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