Labor’s Shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is the latest to question the usefulness of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a welfare measure, and has called for the federal budget and Intergenerational Report to adopt broader measures of welfare:
Many of you know Robert Kennedy told a Kansas audience in 1968 that GDP measures everything ‘except that which makes life worthwhile’.
In more recent times we see GDP’s shortcomings in this horrific fire season which has cost 33 lives and thousands of homes, before we get to all the other personal, social, environmental and economic costs.
