It’s a serious concern of mine in how we use GDP to measure the health of a country’s economy and then equate that to societal wellbeing. While the decreasing deficit may indicate a recovering economy and quantify our country’s obtuse consumption rate, it in no way measures the health of society.

I’m sure many people here are familiar with the adage appearing on popular social networks around this time of year stating “Black Friday: Because only in America, people trample others for sales mere hours after being thankful for what they already have.” I realize that contentment is counteractive to a profit based economy but it just seems to me that the health of a nation should not be measured by how much they spend on superfluous junk which subsequently ends up in a trash or locked away in a garage a few weeks later.

Bobby Kennedy had this to say in regard to measuring a country based on its GDP

"Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage…

…It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. 

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. 

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."