[Gibbon1]

When you get into engineering one finds a strong caution to beware of optimizing the metric at the expense of the process. In your instance, GDP is up, median quality of life is down. Far as I can tell ordinary economists are totally blind to this.

[JoeAltmaier]

Accountants don't have the important columns in their spreadsheet: satisfaction, quality of life, health

[Gibbon1]

I've dated a few accountants, and my mother was one. You'd probably be surprised what's in their spread sheets.

[briandear]

How do you quantify quality of life and satisfaction? It's subjective. Health too is also subjective unless you go with binary: alive or dead.