Yes, we are 'Mismeasuring our Lives'

Writing in the foreword to “Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up” French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, said:

French president,
Nicholas Sarkozy,
who argues we
are mismeasuring
our lives.

“If we do not want our future and the future of our children and grandchildren to be riddled with financial, economic, social and environmental disasters, which are ultimately human disasters, we must change the way we live, consume and produce. We must change the criteria governing our social organizations and our public policies”.

The description of the book by Amazon.com says:

It was in February of 2008, amid the looming global financial crisis, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France asked Nobel Prize–winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, along with the distinguished French economist Jean Paul Fitoussi, to establish a commission of leading economists to study whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—the most widely used measure of economic activity—is a reliable indicator of economic and social progress. The Commission was given the further task of laying out an agenda for developing better measures.
Mismeasuring Our Lives is the result of this major intellectual effort, one with pressing relevance for anyone engaged in assessing how and whether our economy is serving the needs of our society. The authors offer a sweeping assessment of the limits of GDP as a measurement of the well-being of societies—considering, for example, how GDP overlooks economic inequality (with the result that most people can be worse off even though average income is increasing); and does not factor environmental impacts into economic decisions.

Those eager to consider a
response to climate change will
meet again Beneath the Wisteria
 in Shepparton's Maude St Mall
at 11:30am on Saturday,
 February 25.

Probably 20 years ago, a former manager declared “that what gets measured gets done”.

Interestingly, in relation to that comment, the opening paragraph to the book’s preface says;

“In an increasingly performance orientated society, metric matter. What we measure effects what we do. If we have the wrong metrics, we will strive for the wrong things. In the quest to increase GDP, we may end up with a society in which citizens are worse off”.

Considering recent world events, it appears we really are “Mismeasuring our Lives”.