Sunday, June 14, 2009

Numbers that matter

K Rudd and his media machine will have us think that all is hunky dory in this "lucky" country of ours. After all, our GDP is one of the best in the developed world. The debt we have got ourselves into for the sake of financial "stimulus" is one of the lowest in the developed world - break out the champagne!

When you scratch the surface things aren't all that they seem (are they ever?). As I have mentioned in a previous post on GDP and well-being, there's more to being considered fortunate than to have a growing GDP. Below is a list of figures that is a reality check on our good fortune, or as I see it, a blight on where and how our government chooses to spend our money. All figures are from the OECD website and publically available.

Our population growth is ranked 6th highest (1.44) is the OECD, just one below India (1.52). What's wrong with this you may ask? Well, considering we live in a country that has a love affair with consumption there's everything wrong with this. Unless we can reduce our consumption (not likely) then a high population growth is something to be concerned about.

Our balance of payments (not something talked about by K Rudd Inc.) is -5.59% of GDP in 2009, OECD average is -1.46% compare this with Mexico who has a balance of payments of just -0.76%. Not pretty.

The not-so-clever country; Expenditure on R&D is just 2% of GDP. The OECD average is 2.26%, with Sweden (number 1) spending 3.5% of GDP on R&D. Related to this is the number of Patent Applications (2005). Australia - 1180, Canada - 2586, Netherlands - 3739, Japan - 21,163, USA - 35,657! Yes the USA and Japan have a much higher population but the Netherlands with more than twice the patent applications and a population of just under 17 million (33 million in Canada).

Public Health Expenditure (2006) was 5.9% of GDP. The OECD average is 6.5% and France spends a whopping 8.8% of GDP on Public Health. If the Health of our population is so important why is so little finance allocated to it? Persons of below average income going without needed Health care due to costs (2007) was 32%; compare with UK - 9% and Netherlands - 6%! Now that's a number worth looking into.

Poverty Rate in Australia is 0.12 compared to OECD average of 0.105! The lucky country?

Social Expediture in Australia - 17.1% of GDP; compared to OECD average of 20.5%. Italy spends 25% of its GDP.

Lastly, Australia is the driest continent on earth yet we consume the 3rd highest amount of water per capita (in the OECD). 930 cubic metres of water per person! Compare this to the UK with 61 million people who average 240 cubic metres. We use more water in total than the UK with three times the amount of people (no jokes about bathing habits please).

So, K Rudd with have us believe we are going great guns and yes in some sense we are. But I personally think that where it REALLY counts we are not even in the same league as those we like to compare ourselves with. The time has come for a paradigm shift in thinking about our society and what constitutes progress.