5.1. Mind Blowing Decisions
George motioned the Director towards the restaurant, aware that it was 10:45 pm and the restaurant staff would be preparing to close.
At the entrance, the maître d’hôtel welcomed the two celebrities with a smile, aware that his other guests would be looking up from their plates to catch a glimpse.
As they took their seats, the Director couldn’t resist asking,” So, George, have you learned anything from my little treaties so far?”
“Hardly a LITTLE dissertation,” teased George. “More like watching four hours of TED Talks back to back. But don’t get me wrong, it was very thought-provoking. As you say, I knew about some of it, but I’d never considered it all in one joined-up place. That makes a difference.”
“And you know why that is?” Asked the Director.
“Anything to do with the hegemony?” Asked George playfully.
“You’re learning!” Replied the Director in a mock conspiratorial tone.
The two sat at the table and began to browse the menus they’d been handed.
“I’m afraid we are all out of the quail,” said the Maitre’d apologetically, “but the turbot is particularly good.”
“Thank you,” replied the Director. “We won’t take long. We’re aware it’s rather late.”
“Take your time,” responded the Maitre’d, pleased to be serving such distinguished guests, not knowing he’d regret those words at 1am when they’d finally leave the table.
George and the Director quickly ordered, and the Director selected an expensive wine to celebrate the end of the project and the opportunity he’d been given to talk at length to his leading man.
With the logistics out of the way, the Director was ready to start again. “Up for some more?” He asked keenly.
“Press on!” Replied George, bracing himself for the next chapter.
“Well, we’ve finished exploring how we ended up with Capitalism and what a shit show it’s become since then and yet, with all its failings, it continues to flourish thanks to the hegemony and the semi-comatose state of the populous. So all we need now is something better to put in its place.”
“I’ll drink to that!” toasted George with the newly opened Chablis, hoping he’d finally get some solid advice on what to do with his life.
The two clinked glasses, just as George and Alice had done six hours before.
“OK, so this is what I’m going to do.” Explained the Director, aware that his willing friend operated better when he had a road map in front of him.
“I’ll explain the concept of GDP and why it’s such an inadequate measure of success. Then, I’ll explain how I think Adam Smith might have been wrong. And finally, I’ll offer you my vision of the future that doesn’t involve global annihilation. How does that sound?”
“Fan-dab-a-doozy!” Exclaimed George, unsure what else to say. He secretly wished the Director would just cut to the chase and miss out all the technical bits, but he also knew the Director wanted to leave no stone unturned. After all, who knows, the Director might be secretly planning to write a book off the back of their epic conversation? “OK, let’s get to it.”
George also felt renewed enthusiasm as an enormous Surf & Turf Texan-style rack of ribs with seafood accompaniment arrived at precisely the moment the Director began to speak again.
“Right now, the only thing you hear from politicians is ‘we’ve got to increase GDP’ as though this will miraculously solve all our problems, but, of course, that’s all nonsense. In fact, it’ll just make things worse.”
“I’m shorry?” Asked George, his mouth full of food. “Whatsh dish GEEDEEPEE?”
“Oh, apologies”, replied the Director, trying not to look disgusted by George’s table manners; clearly, trying to persuade George to switch to a vegetarian diet would have to wait for another day.
“GDP or Gross Domestic Product, to give it its full name, measures the value of all goods and services that a country produces over a given period. It’s the sort of clipboard that’s hung at the foot of a hospital bed, which politicians look at to diagnose whether the economy is healthy or not. We assume the doctors know what they are doing when they look at these charts. However, after they’ve examined them and instructed the nurses to raise or lower the meds, they simply walk away without so much as a goodbye. Once they’ve gone, look at the charts yourself, and you’ll see the economic equivalent of scribbles and cartoons. It’s shocking. They really don’t know what they’re doing, and GDP is such a very crude measurement of the health of an economy that it’s more like quackery than proper science. If GDP goes up, it’s all cheers and high-fives for the city traders. If it goes down, it’s boos all round and austerity for the poor.”
While all of this was being explained, George was busy grappling with his steak while thinking about those two episodes of ER he appeared in early in his career.
“But hold your horses because GDP only tells us if the pie is growing.” Continued the Director. “It doesn’t tell us who gets a piece of that pie, whether the quality of our lives will improve if there’s more pie being made, or if we’ll be any happier once the pie has been eaten. It certainly doesn’t guarantee the environment will be looked after any better. In fact, when GDP increases, the environment generally suffers even more. It’s no coincidence that the countries with the highest GDP also have the highest greenhouse gas emissions.
“GDP doesn’t tell us anything about that. All it tells us is whether the pie grew and, therefore, whether the GRiFTers have been making money. At best, if GDP goes up, a few more crumbs might fall from their table.”
“Assholes”, Confirmed George under his breath as he manhandled a rib.
“And while a growing GDP in the short term makes politicians very happy, in the long term, it tells us we’re using more resources to keep the dragon fed, and, by that logic, it more or less tells us how much sooner we’ll be killing ourselves!”
“Fuck.” Said George quietly, now distractedly attacking a prawn.
“So, why do we put GDP on a pedestal when we know all this?” Asked the Director rhetorically.
“Beats me,” replied George, wiping his mouth with his napkin.
5.2. Mo Money Mo Problems
“If GDP is such a bad measure of success, what do you suggest we use instead?” asked George, now sufficiently replenished to concentrate again. Looking at the plate of food he’d just devoured, he had an idea. “How about we use the number of McDonald’s I eat per year or something?”
George thought he was just casually witty, but the Director seized upon this to make his next point.
“Funny you should say that,” replied the Director, “the Economist magazine uses something called the Big Mac Index to compare the value of different currencies around the world. If you really loved Big Macs, you ought to be happier if you lived in a country where they were relatively cheap, but real happiness is more than just eating Big Macs. I mean, even if Big Macs were incredibly cheap, there’s only so many of them you’d want to eat before you feel sick.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Replied George earnestly. “I can eat an enormous number of Big Macs before feeling sick.”
The Director tried not to summon this image.
“What I’m saying, George, is that if you had all the money in the world and you could buy anything you wanted, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’d be happy. There’s much more to happiness than just satisfying our superficial desires.”
“I know lots of people who are filthy rich and miserable as hell.” Confirmed George. “I should know. I’m one of them.”
“Me too.” Admitted the Director reflectively. “Most people assume that if they could only buy that new house or new car, they’d finally be content. So they save and eventually own whatever they crave, only to discover, after a couple of weeks, that they’re miserable all over again. I hate to break it to you, George, but you can’t buy happiness.”
“I know all about that too”, replied George, ruefully. “But it’s different if you can’t afford food or a nice place to stay. “
“That’s absolutely right,” agreed the Director. “Everyone deserves to have enough food and a safe place to live. That should be a basic requirement of a functioning society. But I’m talking about all these people who can afford all the food they need and are still unhappy.”
“Did you know,” asked the Director playfully, “there’s only so much money you need?”
“No, I did not know that,” replied George, his interest piqued. “Tell me more.”
“Well,” explained the Director, “they did some research a few years back and discovered something they called the Easterlin Paradox. They gathered a ton of lifestyle and spending data and, after lots of analysis, concluded that when you start earning money, you feel an initial boost of happiness. But then, as you continue to grow richer, the enjoyment starts to wear off. Then, after a certain point, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, you ain’t getting any happier. A number of scientists questioned these findings, but they ring true and make sense to me.”
“Same here,” confirmed George. “The happiest times of my life were when I was parking cars at the Desperate and Divorced nightclub in Torrance. I got plenty of tips and slept with the occasional starlet, and I didn’t have a care in the world. Now I spend months living in hotels, drinking too much Jack and trying to avoid selfie hunters.”
“Me too,” agreed the Director again. “Then there’s other research that backs it up. A different study looked at 450,000 Americans and found that higher incomes made people feel successful, but this didn’t necessarily mean they felt happier. I guess these rich people just sit in their big houses, knowing they are successful but feeling bored and disappointed. Wasn’t being rich supposed to be more fun than this?”
“I tick that box too!” Confirmed George matter-of-factly, now sucking the last of the meat off his greasy ribs.
“I reckon the problem starts with all the advertising we watch.” Speculated the Director. “It pumps our imaginations with ideas, and we become obsessed with owning the latest iPhone 10. Then, when we finally buy one, Apple launches the iPhone 11 Max Pro, and we start all over again. We’re like hamsters running on a wheel, which I find sad. Intelligent humans ought to be smarter than hamsters, but there you are… “
“When I look back at my advertising career, I spent most of my time trying to convince people they’d be respected more if they owned a new Audi or the latest pair of Nikes. I was programming people to feel bad about themselves. I was part of the hegemony.”
“OK, but let’s not go there.” Interjected George. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Well, I did,” replied the Director, “but, as you say, let’s not go there just yet. I’ll talk about it more later on.”
“… Actually, the research found that happier people tended to spend their money on experiences rather than things. They also allocated more quality time to be with the people they loved, and, most of all, they set aside time to help others — and animals, of course. The quickest way for me to feel happy is to hang out with my dog. So, overall, the science suggests it’s not how much money you have, but what you do with it that counts.“
‘You’re probably right,” said George, sounding sanguine.” I used to have a dog, but I had to give her up when I started living away from home so much.”
“On the other side of the coin,” continued the Director, “money can also make you miserable. Most people just want money so they can impress their neighbours, but if that’s the case, then the problem is probably more a lack of self-worth than a lack of funds.
“The part of the research I liked the most was that just knowing that money can’t buy you happiness was itself a source of happiness! Isn’t that great! Realising that money doesn’t make you happy can make you happy!”
“Now that’s what I call a win-win!” Laughed George.
“It IS a win-win,” confirmed the Director with a note of triumph, “and that’s what the GRiFTers are terrified of us finding out. Because if we all woke up one day and realised that simply buying stuff didn’t make us happy; the world of bullshit GRiFTers would grind to a halt.
This was really beginning to make George reassess his life, and in particular, all the expensive things cluttering up his home, which he either never used or didn’t actually like.
“If we stopped being obsessed with buying things and started enjoying ourselves instead, the GRiFTers would be out of a job and have to find something else to do with their sorry lives beyond siphoning off their profits into tax havens. And, best of all, they’d have to mix with the hoi polloi, who don’t measure a person’s worth by the size of their car. They’d hate it!”
The Director chuckled to himself at the thought.
5.3 Can’t Buy Me Love
“But to come back to your question of what can we use instead of GDP, George, well, you might think there are no alternatives because we never hear about them, but actually, there are loads of them out there.”
“Really?” queried George.
“Sure, there’s at least three that I know about, and there are probably a lot more besides. We don’t hear much about them because our governments are so ideologically committed to GDP to the exclusion of everything else. But I’m here to say that GDP is a naive and harmful measure. It’s something Adam Smith would have loved if he’d thought of it, but, as with so much of what he said in 1776, it’s no longer relevant in 2024. As John Maynard Keynes said – When the facts change, we change our minds, eh George?”
“We change our minds.” Agreed George.
“GDP is the central plank of right-wing Capitalist ideology, which starts and ends with financial growth. Looking at it another way, it’s just a measure of the rich getting richer.”
“So what else is on the menu?” asked George.
The Director wasn’t sure if George was asking about alternative economic models or the selection of sweets on the elaborate menu he was now inspecting. He assumed it was the former.
“Well, the first is the Human Development Index – or HDI to its friends. Unlike GDP, the HDI looks at things like health, education, housing and living standards. That makes sense, right? After all, isn’t that what we want from society — a feeling that the quality of life is improving? Especially because, as I say, GDP offers no guarantee of wealth being distributed or spent on things that a society needs to function properly. Call me cynical, but it’s almost as if countries that are only focused on GDP aren’t all that concerned about the welfare of their people. They want to make money for themselves and hope the Invisible Hand will distribute some of it to the poor.”
“I think I’ll start with a Chocolate Bombe.” Was George’s considered response.
“The United Nations set up the HDI in 1990, and, for some reason, the Nordic countries in particular, you know, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, all took it seriously and, no surprise, started to score well on it. These countries also consistently voted for socialist governments with solid welfare systems and equal access to education, healthcare and social security, all paid for, just as in Attlee’s Welfare State, through progressive taxation. New Zealand also scored well on the HDI.
“And it turns out that it isn’t just rich countries that have happier than average citizens; Uruguay and Costa Rica do well on the HDI, too.”
“Hang on,” interjected George, “So, is what you’re saying that we all just need to be a bit more socialist? Is that the big idea? That’s not quite the radical vision I was expecting.”
“No, that isn’t what I’m saying,” countered the Director, a little taken aback. “Hold your horses. I’m just making the point that people tend to be happier when the money is spread around more, but if your government is just chasing GDP, it’s unlikely your country will score well on the HDI. This isn’t rocket science.”
“Oh, OK,” accepted George, getting off his high horse and returning to his Bombe. “Please continue.”
“Let me tell you about the other two measures if you’re still interested?” Said the Director in mock sarcasm.
“Please do,” replied George, now looking as though he might lick the last of the sauce from his dish.
“Like the HDI, there’s the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), developed in the late 1980s when policymakers noticed how GDP failed to measure well-being or quality of life. They designed the GPI to be a better indicator of the health of a society than just a measure of its financial turnover.
“The GPI also considered social factors such as the distribution of income, the value of leisure time and the cost of pollution on the environment.
“And the most exciting thing about GPI was that, by looking at it side by side with GDP, it was impossible not to conclude there was very little correlation between the two. In fact, when you compare the two measures, over the past 100 years, GPD has generally increased, while the value of the Genuine Progress Indicator has either flatlined or declined!
At this point, the Director pulled out his pencil again and began to scribble on the back of the wine menu, eventually describing a rough chart like this:
“So what does that tell you, George?”
George was a little startled at being put on the spot, so he looked at the graph and hoped a shrug of the shoulders would suffice.
“It tells us that, by this measure, the Invisible Hand of the free market and so-called Trickle-Down economics have little effect on the health and happiness of a society. They are horse shit, George. HORSE SHIT!”
“But what difference has any of this made? What do you suppose we’ve done to correct the obvious problems with using GDP to measure success?”
“I’m guessing not much?” Proffered George sheepishly.
“You’re damned right.” Replied the Director. “Absolutely zero, zilch, nada… bugger all… Sweet F.A. … Turns out GDP, which politicians spend their entire careers chasing, bears little relationship to the quality of life ordinary working people lead. If trickle-down economics worked, we’d all be a lot richer and enjoy incredible social infrastructure, and working people wouldn’t be living on the streets and forced to use food banks. Apparently, a rising tide doesn’t lift all boats after all.”
“Just the luxury yachts.” Observed George drily.
“And when you add to that the fact this economic model is slowly killing us, I can only say this is the definition of madness. An increase in GDP doesn’t go into the ordinary person’s pocket; it goes into offshore tax havens where it’s of no use to anyone, and, if you ask me, that’s criminal. So the politicians can take their holy GDP and go fuck themselves.”
“Blimey!” was all George could think to say. However, he did say it in the Northern English accent he’d been using for the past 2 months, so it made the Director chuckle and helped break the downbeat moment.
Deciding he needed something to cheer him up, the Director sighed deeply, took up his spoon, and tucked into his Deconstructed Rhubarb and Custard Compote Fusion. “But, I have to say my favourite GDP alternative isn’t HDI or even the GPI, but something they use in Bhutan
called the Gross National Happiness Index, which looks even further into what makes us happy and satisfied.”
“Bhutan?” asked George, looking up from his dish for a moment, chocolate all around his mouth.
“Yes, it’s a small country in the Himalayas. I went there last year when we were scouting locations for my next film about Trust. A wonderful place. Very spiritual but also very, very happy. Part of me wanted to stay, but I knew I needed to get back to the UK to make the Dragon movie. If we don’t sort out the climate as quickly as we can, even Bhutan will be destroyed.”
The Director slurped custard from his spoon before continuing.
“Back in the 1970s, the King of Bhutan wanted to track how well his country was doing. He was a proper Buddhist, so he knew that material wealth didn’t create happiness and that GDP was, therefore, irrelevant. Instead, he looked for criteria that would measure the inner harmony of his people. After much consideration and meditation, he landed on 33 benchmarks, which included more spiritual aspects of life, such as how his subjects spent their free time, cultural enrichment and ecological diversity, as well as the more obvious stuff like living standards.
“And you might say that’s fine for a tiny mountainous state in the middle of nowhere, but could it work in the UK or USA?
“That’s fine for a tiny mountainous state in the middle of nowhere, but could it work in the UK or USA?” Parroted George, looking for a cheap laugh.
“Well, that’s a fair point,” continued the Director, undaunted by this silliness, “But I like how the King of Bhutan introduced something almost spiritual into his happiness index. He recognised there’s more to life than money and even more to life than equality and living standards. He knew that how we feel inside is just as important as any of these more obvious physical criteria, and I agree. It reminds me of some research that looked at the correlation between age and happiness. Turns out, older people are happier than people in their middle age because, when you get to a certain age, you realise life isn’t worth stressing about. Best to just sit back, stop chasing money and enjoy it a bit more.”
“A good sweet trolley would be one of my criteria.” Added George drolly.
“Good point,” agreed the Director. “But stick with me here because I’m getting close to giving you the answer you want. “
“Do you want to eat that last profiterole, or can I?” asked George, still somewhat distracted.
