Then there are new considerations. There is health. French life expectancy is now two years longer than Americans’, which should compensate for the French having poorer per capita income. So that should be included. Then education; if people are to be authors of their own lives, they have to be educated and not just regurgitate by rote. They need to be able to think. Then there is the degree to which people can organize their personal lives around the activities they value, including getting satisfaction from work. The quality of housing has an immense impact on our satisfaction, again unmeasured and not included. So, change that.
A fascinating table on the values of US and French women reveals that while US women want to walk more than make love, French women rank making love as their No. 1 activity, not caring much for walking. And nobody much liked work, even though so much time is spent there. More effort should be made to promote decent, fulfilling work, says the commission, and then measure and include it in the composite measure of progress. Surveys could and should consistently capture what we want to do with our time, whether we do it and how much we enjoy it.
Political voice counts, too. People don’t like being disenfranchised. They like to vote, speak up in court and be heard at meetings. They value social connectedness. They want a better environment right now, with clean air and water. And they value personal security; people want to be safe.
Capture all of that systematically, says the commission, and you have a handle on the quality of life and whether we are progressing. Last but not least, regularly publish a set of indicators on the sustainability of our economies, ranging from the monitoring of stocks of natural assets such as fish, oil and minerals, as well as the indicators of danger, such as concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Sarkozy says he plans to act on the commission’s recommendations. France will pilot them and push international organizations to follow suit. Many of the measures exist anyway; what is new is pulling them together in a systematic way to replace GDP. And because what we measure should reflect what we value, it will transform the economic and social debate.
In Britain, for example, we would not be discussing spending cuts and deficit reduction in such bald, terrifying and self-harming terms. We would be worrying about the impact on our well-being, because that is what we would be measuring, and the discussion would be how to get what we need in health, education, personal security and social connectedness within cash limits. The question that would be asked of banks after the credit crunch is how they promote economic performance, social progress and well-being.
The entire discourse would change. Good on Sarkozy, and what a sad commentary on our political class that none thought to establish such a commission to answer the only question that matters.
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