Is Gdp a proper measure of economic growth or are other factors more important (HK, Sweden)

Hong Kong has one of the freest markets in the world, only comparable to countries, like Thailand and the like. Hong kongs GDP is 325,755 billion hong kong dollars. This is due to the fact that they are a separate economic area to the rest of china. This means that, instead of being a command economy they have a free market, which encourages things like outside investment and many other facts to grow the home country. They have very little government intervention in their market due it not being needed to be able to make the country work well. The markets work efficiently due to the fact that there are very little barriers to entry so they have to compete to be able to generate income. This drives down prices in the long run. It mostly means that they have nothing like crony capitalism where the government dictates that there should be a monopoly (i.e. the nhs). In this means they are able to optimize efficiency very quickly with little to no natural resources and become a cash cow for the whole of china. They are mostly a service based economy rather than production. They are also (although not widely recognised) a massive tax haven, rated 4th on the global scale. Even though they are a tiny little tax haven they have the 5th biggest stock market in the world. In Hong Kong they are ranked 102nd in the happy planet index out of 151 countries. This is not as bad as it sounds. They ranked 60th in the experienced well being. This shows that the majority of their country experienced well being (also its a well noted factors that first world areas often claim to experience worse well being, this is often attributed to the fact that they expect a lot more out of life). Their ecological footprint is probably what's bringing their rank down. This is shown in their ecological footprint which is rather bad. This is 135 out of 151 countries. This is probably due to the fact that they have very limited growing space and are rather cramped in a small city. Their life expectancy however is brilliant. They are ranked 2nd out of all those nations. They have a life expectancy of 82.8. This actually challenges the ecological footprint factor a bit (as it would be assumed that smog and stuff would negatively affect health, so you may be able to assume that the ecological footprint is attributed to congestion and close living area). It could also possibly be attributed to the non-governmental healthcare. Due to the fact that the healthcare is free market run they may be more likely to be able to pay for things cheaper, more efficiently (due to the fact that people will not go to a doctors who has lots of patients die so work harder to keep the patient alive). This may be what is affecting healthcare. The sustainable society index makes a dangerous choice in not including hong kong in its normal ratings. They put it in the global area of china. This is a dangerous fallacy to make due to the fact that they have a separate economy, and are better thought to be a vassal of china rather than a part of the territory. They have a separate economy and their government grants a much large amount of

freedom to them. Even though the sustainable society index makes this dangerous choice, its worth including the figure which they put china. China ranked 74th out of 158 nations. They actually got a respectable score based on the fact that they are a brutal dictatorship with an oppressive dictator of 573. Seeing as the highest country only had 700 that does not seem like such a huge divergence from the highest country and actually suggests, that even with china dragging it down, the country overall has done decently well in the Sustainable society index (and therefore that hong kong will do better in the future) Once again in GPI hong kong is viewed as in-distinguishable from china. Even though this is still there they have been steadily increasing their GPI along with their GDP. In fact they seem to rise at about the same level, with GPI being below but rising at the exact same points (with a little bit of time lag). This would suggest that they are very closely linked. This is most likely going to be associated to the fact that china, as a collectivist state will be trying very hard to have things like social security set up (which never last in the long term) and therefore they are increasing happiness. Sweden is my secondary country in this report. The economy of Sweden has relatively high taxation to ensure equal distribution of income. They have a very large economy even though they are a relatively small country. The majority of their industry is aimed toward production i.e. secondary sector. They have a rather strong GDP at 525.7 billion USD. This can be associated with one massively important factor though. They never actively participated in world war 2 which means that their economy never had to rebuild or refocus after the war meaning that it has a MUCH higher likelihood of being a lot stronger in this sort of time. They seem to be very focussed on exports which suits the fact that they are mainly a secondary production economy. They have a massive amount of tax though with total tax revenue at 44.2% of gdp in 2012. This is a huge number, that will often make businesses very unwilling to invest in the countries due to the fact that the country believes it has more of a right to the businesses profits than the people actually generating value in the product. They seem to only have the majority of their export partners due to their geographical location with countries like Norway making up 10% of their overall exports. The reason that they most likely have such a high tax revenue is due to the fact that they believe that corporations are inherently crony capitalist in the idea that they want to screw over the consumer more than anyone else in the market. There happy planet index though is rather low in comparison to the amount of money that is taken out of the productive economy and given to the general consumer. They only ranked 52nd out of 151 countries. This would most likely be assigned to their ecological footprint which actually ranked below hong kong. They only scored a 5.7 out of 10 while hong kong scored a 5.8. This would suggest that they are a very ecologically demanding nation and that their production is eating into their world. This could be assigned to the idea that the corporations cant be more ecologically efficient and invest into their more efficient technology due to the huge amount of tax which is imposed on them. They also have a lower life expectancy than hong kong, with it being 81.4 years. This would also suggest that gdp per capita (as of course we have to measure per capita due to the actual geographical size of the 2 countries being hugely different) makes a huge difference in HPI. This can be shown due to the fact that hong kong has a gdp per capita of 51,946 while Sweden has a gdp per capita of 43,180, which is still rather high, therefore they arent very far below Hong kong in terms of HPI but due to the fact that they are below them it could be assigned to the productive value of the

nation increasing the potential of them to generate value, increasing their value as workers and therefore making them feel more valuable, and generally lowering costs across the board. Sweden is number 1 however in the sustainable society index. This would suggest that its actually not the importance of gdp in that country which assigns value to this index, but is in fact mostly likely assigned to the number of regulations and taxation due to the fact that the money is spent on things which, although not being efficient for the economy are helping reduce pollution. I would have to worry about a measure like this, because due to the facts stated above, if they did try to do this it would disadvantage corporations, and although it might make the actual country sustainable, it might just make the economy unsustainable. They ranked top in the global progress indicator. This is a good indication as it shows that they are focussing a lot on their people. The trouble with GPI as a measure is that they are trying to measure unquantifiable things. They are trying to measure sustainability and how much poverty affects the GPI of nation. This could mean that the whole of the GPI is unquantifiable, and is not taking into account all the factors that it needs to take into account to make it a worthwhile thing to use. This would mean that it might not be a good way to measure the progress of a country. In conclusion, after looking at 2 other measures, they all either follow the trends of gdp (with some things changing like a time lag) or are unquantifiable and honestly rather useless. This would suggest that GDP is one of the measures of a countrys value still, although when using it it might be worthwhile taking other factors it account like GPI and other measures, although when using them definitely take any ideas with a grain of salt.