Compare Australia’s well-being budget against Guyana’s transformations

Jul 23, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

A few days ago, the Australian government released its first so-called “well-being budget”, which used 50 different indicators to measure the quality of life of Australians by reporting on such things as how safe Australians feel, how much time people have for recreation, their economic resilience, job satisfaction, state of mental health, and trust in institutions. For the record, twenty indicators saw improvement, seven were stable, 12 deteriorated and others had mixed trends.

Australia thus joined a growing number of countries that share the ambition of building Wellbeing Economies, countries that have shifted their understanding of ‘progress’ and ‘development’. Societies and governments are moving beyond measuring progress in terms of GDP, size of national budgets, or average income levels to evaluating progress in terms of quality of life and collective and subjective well-being.

Compare this people-centered approach with the current situation in Guyana where the President recently gushed about “transformations” occurring in the country when viewing high piles of sand at a construction site.

Sherwood Lowe

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