What’s the best country in the world to live in? Is it the one with the best food? The longest life expectancy? The best weather? For the past 70 years, most governments have relied heavily on a single number to answer that question. This number influences elections, the stock market, and government policy. But it was never intended for its current purpose; and some would argue that the world is addicted to making it grow... forever. This number is called the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, and it was invented by the economist Simon Kuznets in the 1930s, to try and gauge the size of an economy in a single, easy to understand number.
Koja je najbolja država za život? Je li to ona s najboljom hranom ili najdužim životnim vijekom? Ili najboljim vremenskim prilikama? Zadnjih 70 godina, većina vlada oslanjala se na jedan broj kako bi odgovorila na to pitanje. Taj broj utječe na izbore, burzu dionica i politiku vlasti. Ali nije bilo zamišljeno da ima današnju svrhu i neki tvrde kako je svijet ovisan o njegovu vječnom rastom. Taj broj se zove bruto domaći proizvod ili BDP, i uveo ga je ekonomist Simon Kuznets 1930-ih u pokušaju da odredi veličinu gospodarstva jednim lako razumljivim brojem.
GDP is the total monetary value of everything a country produces and sells on the market. To this day, GDP per capita, which is just the total GDP divided by the number of people living in that country, is widely seen as a measure of well-being.
BDP je sveukupna monetarna vrijednost svega što država proizvede i proda na tržištu. Do danas se BDP po stanovniku, što je zapravo samo sveukupni BDP podijeljen s brojem stanovnika države, uglavnom smatra mjerom blagostanja.
But GDP doesn’t actually say anything direct about well-being, because it doesn't take into account what a country produces or who has access to it. A million dollars of weapons contributes the exact same amount to a country’s GDP as a million dollars of vaccines or food. The value society derives from things like public school or firefighters isn’t counted in GDP at all, because those services aren’t sold on the market. And if a country has a lot of wealth, but most of it is controlled by relatively few people, GDP per capita gives a distorted picture of how much money a typical person has.
Ali BDP zapravo ne govori ništa izravno o blagostanju, zato što ne uzima u obzir što država proizvodi i tko ima pristup istom. Oružje vrijedno milijun dolara pridonosi BDP-u jednako kao milijun dolara vrijedna cjepiva ili hrana. Vrijednost koju društvo dobiva od primjerice javnih škola ili vatrogasaca uopće se ne ubraja u BDP zato što se te usluge ne prodaju na tržištu. Ako je država jako bogata, a većinu bogatstva kontrolira relativno malo ljudi, BDP po stanovniku ne daje stvarnu sliku o tome koliko novca prosječna osoba ima.
Despite all that, for a long time, higher GDP did correlate closely to a higher quality of life for people in many countries. From 1945 to 1970, as GDP doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in some western economies, people’s wages often grew proportionally. By the 1980s, this changed. Countries continued to grow richer, but wages stopped keeping pace with GDP growth, or in some cases, even declined, and most of the benefits went to an ever-smaller percentage of the population.
Usprkos svemu tome, dugo vremena visoki BDP usko je korelirao s višom kvalitetom života ljudi u mnogo zemalja. Od 1945. do 1970., u nekim zapadnim gospodarstvima, plaće su često rasle proporcionalno. To se promijenilo 1980-ih. Države su se nastavile bogatiti, ali plaće su prestale pratiti tempo rasta BDP-a, a negdje su se čak i smanjile, i većina povlastica išla je sve manjem postotku stanovništva.
Still, the idea of capturing a nation’s well-being in a single number had powerful appeal. In 1972, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk of Bhutan came up with the idea of Gross National Happiness as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product. Gross National Happiness is a metric that factors in matters like health, education, strong communities, and living standards, having citizens answer questions like, “How happy do you think your family members are at the moment?” “What is your knowledge of names of plants and wild animals in your area?” and “What type of day was yesterday?” The United Nations’ Human Development Index is a more widely used metric; it takes into account health and education, as well as income per capita to estimate overall well-being.
Ipak, ideja o sažimanju blagostanja nacije u jednom broju bila je izuzetno privlačna. Godine 1972., kralj Butana Jigme Singye Wangchuvk došao je na ideju o bruto nacionalnoj sreći kao alternativi bruto domaćem proizvodu. Bruto nacionalna sreća je vrijednost koja obuhvaća zdravlje, obrazovanje, snagu zajednice i životne standarde te stanovnicima postavlja pitanja poput, “Što mislite koliko je vaša obitelj trenutno sretna?” “Koliko znate o imenima biljaka i divljih životinja u vašem okruženju?” i “Kakav dan je bio jučer?” UN-ov indeks ljudskog razvoja vrijednost je koja se češće koristi, a obuhvaća zdravlje, obrazovanje i dohodak po stanovniku kod procjene sveukupnog blagostanja.
Meanwhile, a metric called the Sustainable Development Index factors in both well-being and the environmental burdens of economic growth, again, boiling all this down to a single number. Though no country has been able to meet the basic needs of its people while also using resources fully sustainably, Costa Rica currently comes the closest. Over the past few decades, it’s managed to grow its economy and improve living standards substantially without drastically increasing its emissions. Other countries, like Colombia and Jordan, have made notable progress. Costa Rica now has better well-being outcomes like life expectancy than some of the world’s richest countries.
Dok vrijednost pod nazivom “indeks održivog razvoja” obuhvaća i blagostanje i opterećenje okoliša izazvano ekonomskim rastom, što se opet svodi na jedan jedini broj. Iako nijedna zemlja nije uspjela zadovoljiti osnovne potrebe naroda i istovremeno održivo koristiti resurse. Kostarika je tome trenutno najuspješnija. Zadnjih nekoliko desetljeća, uspjela je razvijati gospodarstvo i značajno poboljšavati životni standard bez drastičnog povećavanja emisija. Druge države, poput Kolumbije i Jordana, također su značajno napredovale. Kostarika sada ima bolje ishode blagostanja, poput životnog vijeka nego neke od najbogatijih država na svijetu.
Ultimately, there are limits to any approach that boils the quality of life in a country down to a single number. Increasingly, experts favor a dashboard approach that lays out all the factors a single number obscures. This approach makes even more sense given that people have different priorities, and the answer to which country is best to live in depends on who’s asking the question.
Konačno, postoje ograničenja u svakom pristupu koji svodi kvalitetu života u državi na jedan broj. Stručnjaci sve više preferiraju prikaze iz kojih se vide svi čimbenici koje skriva jedan broj. Takav pristup ima još više smisla jer ljudi imaju različite prioritete. Odgovor na pitanje o najboljoj državi za život ovisi o tome tko to pitanje postavlja.
So what if that were you designing your countries well-being metric? What do you value, and what would you measure?
Kako biste vi osmislili mjerilo blagostanja vaše države? Što smatrate vrijednim i što biste mjerili?