Central government policy is based on a misguided understanding of the macroeconomics of a modern, fiat-currency economy. As the owner/issuer of a nation's currency, a central government has unlimited spending power. Moreover, taxation exists as nothing more than a means by which a central...

While global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has increased more than three-fold since 1950, economic welfare, as estimated by the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), has actually decreased since 1978. We synthesized estimates of GPI over the 1950–2003 time period for 17 countries for which GPI has...

This paper argues that GDP growth in both developed and developing countries has associated costs that can outweigh the benefits and thus reduce sustainable well-being. This conclusion is based upon the findings of empirical applications of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to a range of...

In 1980, biologist Paul Ehrlich and economist Julian Simon entered into a bet over whether the real prices of five resources would increase or fall between 1980 and 1990. Because the real prices of the five resources declined, Simon won the bet. But Simon won, not because he was more skilled...

Andrew Brennan (Ecological Economics, 2013--this issue) has argued that the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) are theoretically flawed because, as indicators designed to capture the net psychic income generated by economic activity, they fail to...