The SoSA Perspective

Recession! You think?

Alright, let’s everybody panic. The feared recession seems to be upon us. What to do, what to do?

Pardon me if I don’t jump right on that panic stricken band wagon. In almost all ways that really matter to people (the quality of life we lead, day to day) we’ve been in a recession since the middle seventies. Therein hangs the tale.

How can it be that there’s been a recession in our quality of life for the last thirty years and we never read about it? Well, because we don’t pay attention to anything but our Gross Domestic Product in measuring our economic well being. And GDP is a lousy measure of our actual well being. GDP measures only goods and services that are traded for money. GDP excludes everything else. So if you have an oil spill, for instance, GDP goes up when you pay someone to clean it up. No one in his right mind thinks the oil spill contributes to our well being. In the same way everyone knows that to stay home and raise our young children is very important. Yet, when we do that, because we’re not paid to do that, GDP doesn’t record our increased well being. When we go to work and pay for day care, then GDP goes up!

The point of this tirade is simply that we will have better quality of life when we begin to pay attention to those things that make for a better quality of life, and not before. As long as GDP is our God, then we’ll get more of what that God offers. Quality of life is not necessarily one of that Gods’ blessings.