1 min.
Avvenire, 6 August 2009
Well-being is not measured in terms of GDP. A Few Words with Tullio De Mauro.
by Luigi Vaccari
«Vast international effort has gone into the development of indicators such as IHU – the Index of Human Development – which besides income, also takes into account life, health and cultural conditions. However, its echo in Italy is rather modest. Moreover, at an international level, increases in income and profits seem to remain the dominant indicators. Greater consumption means greater enterprise profit and increased income … at least for medium-level income, which really means high-level income. This still seems to be the dominant outlook today, let along TV advertisements from a few years ago.
However, if we listen carefully to the words of a great leader like Barack Obama, his main focus – certainly interesting as opposed to our national backwardness – is: education will be the currency of the 21st century. So, what does this mean? Greater education means greater income levels … and this is partly true. However, Obama’s objective is to increase income, rather than make life more sober and calm.”
