Glossary
Canadian Index of Well-being An initiative to develop a new comprehensive measure of well-being that reflects economic, social and environmental conditions that matter most to Canadians. Capital Wealth, in whatever form, used or capable of being used to produce more wealth. Also an accumulated stock of such wealth money or property or its value which is owned or used in business by a person, corporation, etc. Chrematistics An ancient Greek term which literally means the art of money-making or...
Chinas xiaokang society An economy of moderation
Since November 2004, I have been traveling to China along with colleagues Peter Bartelmus one of the fathers of green accounting at the United Nations and Laszlo Pinter a sustainability measurement expert with the International Institute for Sustainable Development based in Winnipeg . We are providing strategic economic council to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences regarding China's efforts to adopt green GDP accounting and develop new indicators of progress towards the goal of a harmonious...
Encouraged by pioneering reports
Moving to Alberta Treasury in 1995, I entered an exciting area measuring the overall performance of the government and the quality of life of Albertans. Measuring Up5 was one of the first triple-bottom-line performance reports in which a government described the conditions using 24 core indicators of people, prosperity and preservation the 3-Ps of progress . Measuring Up rivaled pioneer quality of life indicators in Oregon Oregon Benchmarks , Minnesota Minnesota Milestones and Seattle...
Beginning the work in Canada
If updating the US GPI had been my economic Mt. Everest, my next goal was developing a solid and permanent base camp to advance GPI accounting in Canada. I wanted to develop Redefining Progress Canada and take the original US GPI work to a new level of sophistication and practical application. My friend and former economics thesis advisor, Dr. Michael Percy now Dean of the Faculty of Business at the University of Alberta, gave me the chance to create and run a research think tank at the...
Chrematistics money or oikonomia life
Since modern economics seems to be focused on financial and material wealth management it is instructive to learn that Aristotle, the third-century-BC Greek philosopher, made an important distinction between oikonomia eco-nomics and chrematistics.35 Chrematistics is a word rarely heard in today's economic or business discourse yet it should be because it comes from the Greek meaning the art of money-making, with the root chrema meaning money, riches or something useful. Ecological economist...