trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

3. Growth of GDP doesn’t guarantee growth in welfareThe volume of purchases has, through the shift of significances, become the measure of welfare. The(economic) welfare of an entire nation is commonly measured by Gross Domestic Product, GDP, whichdescribes the value of the production generated within a country’s national borders. The indicator isflawed in terms of measuring actual welfare: itemizing purchases or sales and aggregating the sums ofmoney spent on them don’t produce information on what has been achieved with the purchased goodsfrom the point of view of people’s welfare (in their own experience).Welfare measured by GDP is calculated per individual citizen. It is speculatively assumed that thehigher the GDP the higher the welfare of a nation (made up of the calculated average of its citizens) andof its individual, theoretical average citizen. Economic growth has thus been set as the universal goal,with the presumption that it will continue without any foreseeable limit. The claims concerning thenecessity of economic growth seem however to be based on beliefs that in themselves have been leftwithout sufficient grounds. The concept is used in both everyday speech and economics withoutreflection and in a propagandist manner, as something positive purely in itself. The rise in GDP containsfeatures that are downright paradoxical, which Riihimäki (2002, p.116), in addition to Baudrillard(2004) and many others, has noted by pointing out that as the market economy becomes totalised weend up having to pay for the water we drink, the peace of nature we enjoy and even the air we breath.The payment is justified by the products’ higher degree of processing: “the purifying of polluted drinkingwater means that water is processed. In today’s world, where everything is becoming chargeable, thenumbers on growth of GDP give an exaggerated picture of the total wealth.“ Baudrillard (2004, p.39)uses the term “homeopathic treatment of growth by growth” with reference to the method of calculatingGNP 1 in which even the consequences of repairing caused damages is seen to increase welfare – such as,say, a thriving mineral water industry, after the natural water reserve has first been spoiled.”Now, these compensatory expenditures, whether private or collective, which are intended tocope with dysfunctions rather than increase positive satisfaction, are added in, in all theaccounts, as part of the rise in the standard of living. Not to mention the consumption ofdrugs, alcohol and the other conspicuous or compensatory expenditure, or the militarybudgets, etc. All of this is growth and, hence, affluence”. (ibid. p.40)Baudrillard goes on to state that “we are everywhere reaching a point where the dynamic of growthand affluence is becoming circular and generating only wheel-spin and where, increasingly, the system isexhausting itself in its own reproduction.”[…] “The only objective result then, is the cancerous growth offigures and balance sheets.” (ibid. p40.)I agree with Riihimäki (2002, p.110) that the basic question of economics on the promotion ofeconomic growth is wrongly formulated, and as Riihimäki (1996, pp.30-31) notes, GDP is a “mutualranking list of the wealth of the rich western countries”, which they started to publish in the days of Cold1GNP (Gross Natural Product) is a ”subsidiary concept” for GDP, taking into account foreign income and output. Itactually doesn’t make much difference which of the concepts is used when speaking of the size or growth of aneconomy at a general level: the figures correlate with each other strongly.176