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 zemlja na svetu za život? Da li je to ona sa najboljom hranom? Najdužim životnim vekom? Najboljom klimom? U poslednjih 70 godina, većina vlada se umnogome oslanjala na samo jedan broj u odgovoru na to pitanje. Ovaj broj utiče na izbore, berzu i politiku vlade. Ali on nikada nije bio određen za sadašnju namenu; a neki smatraju da je svet postao zavisan od njegovog rasta... u nedogled. Ovaj broj se zove bruto domaći proizvod ili BDP, a izmislio ga je ekonomista Sajmon Kuznec 1930-ih, u pokušaju da proceni veličinu privrede u jednom lako razumljivom broju.
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 ukupna novčana vrednost svega što neka zemlja proizvede i proda na tržištu. Do danas, BDP po glavi stanovnika, što je samo ukupan BDP podeljen sa brojem ljudi koji žive u toj zemlji, generalno se smatra merom 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.
Međutim, BDP zapravo ne govori ništa direktno o blagostanju jer ne uzima u obzir šta neka zemlja proizvodi ili ko ima pristup tome. Milion dolara u naoružanju doprinosi potpuno istom iznosu BDP-a neke zemlje kao milion dolara u vakcinama ili hrani. Vrednost koju društvo dobija od stvari poput javnih škola ili vatrogasaca uopšte se ne računa u BDP jer se te usluge ne prodaju na tržištu. A ako neka zemlja ima mnogo bogatstva, ali većinu toga kontroliše relativno mali broj ljudi, BDP po glavi stanovnika daje iskrivljenu sliku količine novca prosečne osobe.
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.
I pored svega toga, dugo vremena, viši BDP je bio usko povezan sa višim kvalitetom života za ljude u mnogim zemljama. Od 1945. do 1970, kako se BDP udvostručio, utrostručio ili čak učetvorostručio u nekim zapadnim ekonomijama, plate ljudi su često proporcionalno rasle. Do 1980-ih, ovo se promenilo. Zemlje su nastavile da se bogate, ali plate su prestale da idu u korak sa rastom BDP-a ili, u nekim slučajevima, čak su i opale, a većina beneficija pripala je sve manjem procentu 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 prikazivanju blagostanja nacije kroz jedan broj bila je izuzetno privlačna. Godine 1972, kralj Butana Džigme Singe Vangčuk došao je na ideju da bruto nacionalne sreće bude alternativa za bruto domaći proizvod. Bruto nacionalne sreće je mera koja uzima u obzir stvari poput zdravstva, obrazovanja, jakih zajednica i životnog standarda, i postavlja građanima pitanja poput: „Šta mislite koliko su trenutno srećni članovi vaše porodice?” „Koliko poznajete nazive biljaka i divljih životinja u vašem kraju?” i: „Kakav je dan bio juče?“ Indeks ljudskog razvoja Ujedinjenih nacija je mera koja se više koristi; ona uzima u obzir zdravlje i obrazovanje, kao i dohodak po glavi stanovnika radi procene opšteg 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.
U međuvremenu, mera poznata kao indeks održivog razvoja uzima u obzir kako blagostanje tako i ekološka opterećenja ekonomskog rasta, opet, svodeći sve ovo na samo jedan broj. Iako nijednoj zemlji ne uspeva da zadovolji osnovne potrebe svog naroda a da takođe koristi resurse na potpuno održivi način, Kostarika je trenutno najbliža tome. Tokom proteklih decenija, uspela je da razvije svoju ekonomiju i značajno poboljša životni standard bez drastičnog povećanja emisija. Druge zemlje, poput Kolumbije i Jordana, ostvarile su značajan napredak. Kostarika sada ima bolje ishode blagostanja poput životnog veka nego neke od najbogatijih zemalja sveta.
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.
Naposletku, postoje granice za svaki pristup koji svodi kvalitet života u nekoj zemlji na samo jedan broj. Stručnjaci sve više favorizuju pristup komandne table koji izlaže sve faktore koje taj jedan broj prikriva. Ovaj pristup ima još više smisla budući da ljudi imaju različite prioritete, a odgovor na to koja zemlja je najbolja za život zavisi od toga ko postavlja pitanje.
So what if that were you designing your countries well-being metric? What do you value, and what would you measure?
Dakle, šta kad biste vi dizajnirali meru blagostanja vaše zemlje? Koje su vaše vrednosti i šta biste vi merili?