[freebeard]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Correlation is not causation, remember. Also, GDP is not really a good measure if the population. That is, if you keep the GDP the same and cut the population in half, the GDP per capita has doubled, no?

Consider that everyone may be measuring the wrong thing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ppiness-counts

Bhutan measures prosperity by gauging its citizens' happiness levels, not the GDP. Now its ideas are attracting interest at the UN climate change conference in Doha

Since 1971, the country has rejected GDP as the only way to measure progress. In its place, it has championed a new approach to development, which measures prosperity through formal principles of gross national happiness (GNH) and the spiritual, physical, social and environmental health of its citizens and natural environment.

For the past three decades, this belief that wellbeing should take preference over material growth has remained a global oddity. Now, in a world beset by collapsing financial systems, gross inequity and wide-scale environmental destruction, this tiny Buddhist state's approach is attracting a lot of interest.