What else should count as growth?

Dear Editor,

Guyana may be one of the most interesting places in the Caribbean right now to ask a question our family has been working on: what exactly should a country count when it says it is getting richer?

GDP can tell us that an economy produced more. But our Abundance Theory asks what happens when we also count food-producing capacity, useful human capability, secure water and energy, housing, biodiversity, things that last and can be repaired and even the amount of unnecessary time and friction removed from ordinary family life.

In that view, growth becomes much more physical. If a country can feed more of its people, solve more of its own problems, keep more capability inside the society and make the basics of life easier to access, something real has grown even before we ask what happened to the money. Parts of our family’s economic thinking have recently drawn coverage in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian^[1] and in Puerto Rico business media. That encouraged us to bring the wider Abundance Theory directly into the Caribbean conversation.

For Guyana, with such extraordinary economic change happening so quickly, we think there is a fascinating story in asking what the national accounts are capturing brilliantly and what forms of wealth may still be sitting outside the measurement. If the idea catches your attention, Sherika and I would be happy to speak with your newsroom and have it challenged from a Guyanese perspective. We have three children, so in our house any definition of wealth that forgets food, capability and time gets tested fairly quickly.

References

1. Trinidad and Tobago excellence to be celebrated in NYC - Trinidad Guardianwww.guardian.co.tt ↩