Green Party Platform:
Economic Measurement
The corporate market system is based on a competitive struggle to exploit people and nature for profit. This focus is reflected in the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which serves as the principle index of our economic well-being.
The GDP shows positive gains when production of goods and services increases. But it does not show a negative decrease to account for the detrimental effects of this production. Such externalized costs are borne by local communities and society as a whole. For example, the nation's largest oil spill (the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound) was a boon to Alaska's GDP, but the spill's cost to the environment, and to the many people affected, were not considered to be economically relevant.
The Green Party will work for a more realistic economic measurement system:
- Devise an economic monitoring system that measures productive enterprises' total costs to the environment and society. Some of these costs can not be expressed in monetary terms, but various accounting techniques are being developed to represent such costs. We support these efforts and will encourage their implementation to augment or replace the GDP. [see the True Cost Pricing plank]
- Account for not only environmental costs, but also social costs such as substandard wages and working conditions.
- Classify activities such as volunteerism, domestic work and child rearing as contributions to the economy.
- Require businesses and government agencies to determine what social and environmental effects their activities are having, and to make that information public.