Consider the information presented here discussion starters. The real discussion will take place in the room and, for those who wish, in the comments discussion below.
Gross National Product (GNP):
An estimate of the total money value of all the final goods and services produced in a given one-year period by the factors of production owned by a particular country's residents. ("Final" goods and services means goods and services sold or otherwise provided to their final consumers -- that is, to avoid double counting, the value of steel sold to GM to make a car is not added separately into the GNP or GDP totals because its value is already included when we add in the final sales price of the car to the customer.)Gross National Happiness (GHN)
As such, the overarching goal of every aspect of life, including economics, is not seen in the multiplication of material wants, which can be satisfied by consumption, but in the purification of the human character. The objectives of market economics, i.e. increasing consumption and accelerating growth are thus only relevant as means to an entirely different end – human well-being.
The above are from the (Un)Happy Planet Report of the New Economics Foundation
In per capita income, world wide the United States ranks #5 at #$33.070.30
Costa Rica Ranks #56 with a per capita income of $3,913.18 per person
The horseman serves the horse,
The neat-herd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
'Tis the day of the chattel,
Web to weave, and corn to grind,
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
UPDATE
Thomas Friedman:
We had a values breakdown — a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. Wall Street may have been dealing the dope, but our lawmakers encouraged it. And far too many of us were happy to buy the dot-com and subprime crack for quick prosperity highs.
Update II.
From Newsweek: In the 1980s the French undersea explorer and environmentalist Jacques-Yves Cousteau preached obsessively against the global fixation on GDP growth that implied all consumption was good even if it meant dooming future generations to a declining quality of life—or no life at all. The true measure of prosperity, he used to say, should be based on a broader understanding of “happiness,” even if this sounded like “a crazy idea.”
So, does it boil down to this?
or
