There is one other, overarching way in which numbers are given God-like (and therefore unquestioned) status. This is in the ongoing assessment of prosperity in the United States – and many other countries. Citizens of the United States can celebrate when the Gross National Product is strong and can express concern (and even change their voting decisions) if the GNP is not strong. This measurement of prosperity is, in tun, based exclusively on economic conditions, with no thought being given to noneconomic measures (that are usually not readily assigned a number). This same bias operates at smaller levels—ranging from the similar assessment of prosperity at the state and local governmental level to the assessment of success at the level of individual organizational level (especially corporations) –that are governed by “bottom line” (economic) judgments.
Stone is somewhat optimistic about the possiblity of noneconomic measures beginning to eneter into the measurement of prosperity. She identifies the Social Progress Index as a measurement that is “laden with interesting ideas about quality of life as well as thoughtproivoking measurement problems. “ (Stone, 2021, p. 90) In one of my own recent books, Rosalind Sun and I joined with Deborah Stone in offering a somewhat optimistic view about broader (and often nonnumerical) ways of judging prosperity (Sun and Bergquist, 2021, Word for World, p. 310):
The broader assignment of investments, costs and benefits might inform a revised measure of societal prosperity—as we find in the new economistics of Kate Raworth. Many of the traditional assumptions about this assignment are now being questioned inside government offices. Additional institutions are involved in the advocation of these revisions. Institutes and agencies (such as DEAL) work with or offer thoughtful critiques of governments as well as help guide new initiatives being engaged by communities such as Amsterdam. While Gross National Product (GNP), as a strickly financial formula, is currently being used exclusively to measure prosperity in most communities, alternatives to GNP are now being widely advocated and given serious consideration by people in power—especially those who are listending to Kate Raworth and other progressive 21st Century economists.
We go on to note (Sun and Bergquist, 2021, p. 310):
At the present time, when new legislation is introduced in a legislative body in the USA (and many other countires) it is “scored” for financial impact: what will happen in terms of revenues and expenses if this legislation is implemented? Shouldn’t potential legislation also be “scored” for its impact on social welfare and equity? Several institutes in the United States are now advocating this expanded scoring process. We might ask an even more pointed question as we consider the life of the women we have been studying: shouldn’t the prosperity of a society (or at least a specific community) be measured at least in part by the quality of life being led among its working citizens? How might proposed legislation be scored for its impact on this segment of our society (ciitizens who often live below the Line)? We can expand the scope of our concern about impact: shouldn’t societal prosperity be measured in part by the care this society is taking in protecting the environment in which residents of this society live.
When considering the ways in which many people (especially women) have been placed in a status of “slave wages”, Rosalind Sun and I proposed (Sun and Bergquist, 2021) that accountability must be broadened. The numberical Gods must be confronted if we are to achieve a highly level of equity in the workplace (and in the lives of many people around the world). Hopefully, a “bottom line” mentality will not always remain the coin of the realm among those who are governing public institutions and those who are leading contemporary organizations.
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