諾貝爾獲獎經濟學家稱"GDP"已經過時

Nobel-winning e-conomist Joseph Stiglitz would like gross domestic product (GDP) to go the way of the pyramid inch and the Arabic mile.

諾貝爾獲獎經濟學家約瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨希望國內生產總值（GDP）像金字塔尺和阿拉伯裏這些古代單位一樣被淘汰。

"The world is facing three existential crises: a climate crisis, an inequality crisis and a crisis in deMocracy," he writes. "Yet the accepted ways by which we measure economic performance give absolutely no hint that we might be facing a problem."

他寫道：“世界正面臨三個生存危機：氣候危機、不平等危機和民主危機。然而我們衡量經濟表現的公認方法完全沒有示意我們可能遇到了問題。”

He's right! In the United States, GDP is on the upswing, yet Los Angeles burns regularly, and the U.S. president faces impeachment.

他說得對！美國GDP增長迅速，但洛杉磯頻繁起火，美國總統又面臨彈劾。

The problem, he says, is that politicians see positive GDP figures and continue with the status quo. GDP gives no hint of environmental degradation or resource depletion, nor inequality, middle-class suffering, or lower standards of living.

他說問題就在於政治家們看到了積極的GDP數據，並繼續保持現狀。GDP並未表明環境惡化或資源枯竭，也沒體現不平等、中產階級的痛苦或生活水平的降低。

"If growth is not sustainable because we are destroying the environment and using up scarce natural resources our statistics should warn us," he says. "It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social performance." Preach.

他說：“如果經濟增長不可持續是因爲我們正在破壞環境並耗盡稀缺的自然資源，統計數據應該向我們發出警告。很明顯我們衡量經濟表現和社會表現的方法從根本上就是錯的。”

His new book, Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being, cowritten with French e-conomists Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Martine Durand, provides a blueprint for how countries can use more appropriate metrics that account for details such as sustainability and—imagine!—how people feel about their lives.

他的新書《Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being》是和法國經濟學家Jean-Paul Fitoussi、Martine Durand合著的，這本書爲各國如何使用更合理的指標提供了藍圖，要考慮到各種細節，如可持續性和人們的幸福指數。

This all began a decade ago, when Nicolas Sarkozy, then the president of France, asked Stiglitz and fellow Nobel winner Amartya Sen, along with Fitoussi, to set up a commission studying GDP. They published their early deliberations in a book called Mismeasuring Our Lives.

這一切從十年前就已經開始了，後來成爲法國總統的尼古拉·薩科齊當時讓斯蒂格利茨和同樣獲得諾貝爾獎的Amartya Sen，以及Fitoussi共同設立研究GDP的委員會，他們在《Mismeasuring Our Lives》一書中給出了早期的審議意見。

From an e-conomist's perspective, metrics are the key to everything. "If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing," writes Stiglitz.

從經濟學家的角度來看指標是最重要的。斯蒂格利茨寫道：“如果我們衡量的東西是錯的，那我們的做法也是錯的。”