[xyzzy123]

I think prosperity (particularly if we include health, education, wellbeing etc) is unfortunately very difficult to measure and any attempt necessarily incorporates a lot of speculation and ideology.

A forest cleared creates wealth & prosperity, but what was the value of the forest that was lost? What value do we put on natural amenity, biodiversity, a pristine environment?

An employee works very long hours, numbers go up. Great. In specific situations though we can ask: was any wealth actually created, or was the wellbeing of the employee and their children simply exchanged for dollars?

etc. It's value judgements all the way down.

[csomar]

As the divide gets more extreme (between GDP per capita numbers and reality), I think we’ll soon have a “Quality of Life” kind of an index.

You can have a high salary in country A, but live in a small studio, eat shit-food and have to take a crappy metro for work.

Or you can take a much lower salary, live in a nice 2-Br apartment, eat at nice restaurants and take a new nice metro for work, and still be able to afford a car.

You’d need $120k/year to afford 1 in New York, and $30k/year to afford 2 in Kuala Lumpur.

[daze42]

This seems to be the root of most, if not all, economic disagreements. It's just so hard to objectively measure these things.

[smaddox]

Agreed. But I don't think it would take a herculean effort to do better than GDP.