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In response to the weekend recyclers group who call themselves the Bluegreens, regarding their misfire at the Greens stance on economic growth, here's my personal answer to a question in the recent election debate we had over here in London.
Question: How would your party stimulate economic growth?
GDP, the common measure of our economic growth, is a measure designed to monitor and maximise wartime output, invented during WWII, as such it is not a good measure of quality of life.
Unlike the other parties, we don't see economic growth, as measured by GDP, as the panacea to all problems. The question is not whether to grow but what to grow.
For instance, GDP doesn't take into account bad economic factors such as oil spills. GDP measures the activity surrounding a massive oil spill as a positive...as growth.
In other words, we would look to add a measure that takes into account quality of life, and seek to stimulate growth of that measure.
Things such as personal and national debt reduction, base wage increases, lower crime, and better health of citizens can all reduce a nations GDP whilst improving quality of life.
Based on this other parties start to look a little silly arguing for their versions of growth.
The Greens will happily support an increase in a wide range of life enhancing and job rich goods and services.
We would gradually move tax off income and shift it onto waste and pollution. Why tax initiative? Let's instead tax the dirty water used in production or clothes washing for instance....and thereby encourage new technologies which would reduce one's tax liability.
The essence of the Greens economic approach is that we want goods and services that are well-made by people who are well-paid and which are proudly taken to the world not just as products but as messages of hope from the cleanest, greenest, funkiest nation on Earth.
Christiaan Briggs
http://www.votegreen.org.nz/
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