[LETTERS] Why GDP based economic growth model is flawed

Editor, RE: “People do not eat GDP” (The New Times, July 30). GDP based economic growth model, also known as trickle-down economics, is meant to fail because it’s an elitist-centered model. The increase of the elites’ wealth globally coincides with the increase of poverty for the average person even though the GDP might be increasing. This can easily be demonstrated by the fact that we continue to witness an increase in the number of billionaires around the world yet at the same time poverty is also increasing on the other end of the spectrum. Wealth is not created from thin air but is taken from other people in one way or another. Importantly, western neo-liberal policies that focus on GDP economics that favour short- and medium-term wealth accumulation ignore the effects of environmental degradation on future generations. Already, the wealth of the top 62 richest people in the world is equal to that of half of the world’s population: this wealth is acquired through environmental destruction and the usage of slave-like labour. It is important that African policymakers understand that increased inequality is a certain recipe for future instability and economic chaos. The focus should be on grassroots, people-based economic approaches and promoting and repairing our damaged ecosystems as the key to economic sustainability. GDP economic based model is one of those western fit-all approaches that the whole world have been coerced – directly or otherwise – to implement in spite of its negative effects on the citizenry for the interests of the global elite. Ndoli Sabi

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[LETTERS] Why GDP based economic growth model is flawed