UN-measurables

In London ,you pay about 6 $ for a Big Mac, in Bangkuk you pay about 3 $ and in Beirut you pay a little bit less and blu blu blu...
And what is it about ?Could an Index like big mac price indicate the structural realities of an economy?Some people and some institutions say yes.Thats why they coined the terms like GDP ,GNP , etc.
In New Delhi with 5 dollar you get a good lunch in a decent restaurant but in london or in Newyork no, never(of course if you enter a Marks&Spencer you can buy a digestive biscuits and ,,,ok i am not sure if still 5 $ is enough for a pack of digestive )
Discrepancies between these economies is not a simple thing that could be measured with the indices like Big Mac (as The Economist tries to convince us) or a pack of biscuits or even a perfect Lunch in Banglor or Edinburgh or Kabul.
In paris you drink your cofee in an ambient sexy cafe' in Newyork you do the same in Starbucks lounges, in Tehran you drink Chaii(persian word for tea) in an old 19th century stylish ghahve-khaneh (persian word for Tea-house).
So all the places around the world peolpe eat much the same or perhaps better to say do the very same.
Thats a good point and thats why people (people here means economists) apply some jargons like GDP or GNP or GDP per capita ,,,
But though the resemblense of human activities in different society is a good point in coining global benchmarks like GDP's but it lacks a very critical content .
Now it is a common fact that the real content of any human activity is something more than a computable figure.The truth is that in the modern way of economics thinking we don't and can not calculate very internal feelings of people which is a very and essential outcomes of any human activity.
As I have said in a previous blog our incomplete scientific advances (ofcourse we can't say completely why we are such a desperate miserable creatures because if we could say , then we wouldn't)is a good assistant to find the way and sheild agianst the misery of unknowns.But our some acheivements makes us so arrogant that we forget we are just incomplete animals with incomplete flair to know .
The GDP is the same .These days I see the term so much that It became abhorrent to apply it in its right place.
GDP and GDP percapita is becoming another myth , like all the mythes we humankind are prone to believe in .However guys like Amartya Sen tried to change the common beliefs on the issue but we still see it around .So for now we have another term coined for this purpose , PPP or purchase power parity which is basically based on the BigMac price comparison model or very much like that.
So GDP 's and these types of jargons are void of the real contents of life ,realitis like happiness , sorrow and love and abhorrence...
So you, American or Norwegian or German or a native of any rich country , don't rely on the figures or on your Subzero or Wolf appliance equipped American kichtens instead ask yourself ,Am i really happy with my new Lexus or Hummer?And if your not you have two choices ,either watch the new car ads or think about the style of your life.But GDPs don't tellyou the truth or at least all the truth .
In india you can be happy with 500$ monthly income but in Los Angeles that couldn't be called income at all.
I will continue this debate more.

No Land's Man

No Land's Man

This world will grow cold,
a star among stars,
one of the smallest,
this great world of ours
a gilded mote on blue velvet.
This world will grow cold one day,
not even as a heap of ice,
or a lifeless cloud,
it will roll like an empty walnut round and round
in pitch darkness for ever.
For now you must feel this pain,
and endure the sadness,
but so loved this world
that you can say,
'I have lived'.
February 1948 -Nazim Hikmet