The Pursuit of Happiness
Everybody is familiar with the term GDP or GNP which is Gross National Product or Gross Domestic Product. It is sometimes named as GDI or Gross Domestic Income. In layman’s terms it is the marker that dictates whether a country’s economy is progressing or not. What it doesn’t put into account is the welfare of the country’s citizens and its wealth distribution.
Bhutan innovated the concept of Gross National Happiness(GNH) which considers the general spiritual and holistic well being of the Bhutanese people. Perhaps such system are flawed but we cannot take away the fact that the physical and spiritual well being is of utmost importance and financial progress is second. I feel that the only flaw GNH has is the quantitative measurement such factors have.
Another proposed replacement for GDP is the Genuine Progress Indicator.GPI is an attempt to measure whether a country’s growth, increased production of goods, and expanding services have actually resulted in the improvement of the welfare of the people.
In a world where materialism and industrialization abounds, do we still have value? In the Philippines, GDP has a growth rate of 7.3%(according to the paper I read), with such impressive growth rate how come plenty of people are still living in poverty and state that there is still no improvement in their life. The health care delivery system in the Philippines also suffer from lack of funds because Health Centers, Provincial, District and City hospitals are controlled by politicians that have jurisdiction over them, and naturally they fall prey to politicization and immature campaigning. If the Philippines’ Gross National Happiness would be measured, for sure it would earn a very low mark given the over all gloom that covers the country today.
The Philippines has been a bastion of capitalism and commercialism for centuries(with several areas where contentment was the focus). Do we really need new bridges, trains and roads if most of our countrymen are living way below the poverty line. Materialism is really abundant in our culture and I too admit to being materialistic. How do we change that when everywhere you go there would be advertisements pimping their products?
Every year we experience heavy deforestation,over farming and overfishing all in the pursuit of bigger profits whereas the only goal farmers, fishermen, miners loggers and many other workers have is the opportunity to feed,clothe and give education to their families. These adverse effects are the result of too much focus on income generation but the income the nation makes are unevenly distributed. This is OK as long as basic necessities are provided, but this is not so the case. These factors brings about higher criminality and lawlessness in the pursuit of materialism.
I actually support the GPI as replacement for GDP because it provides a more holistic perception of what a country is progressing into. Sometimes we always think of the bigger picture but most of the time its the people who are regarded as minuscule factors in the big race for profit.
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