Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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The manifesto goes on to examine what causes unnecessary and dangerous
growth. It talks of pathological or cancerous growth, of our obsession with
conspicuous consumerism and the end of the industrial age. Others, they said,
believed beech felling on the West Coast and selling cheap power to Comalco
were all justifiable because they provided jobs.
Origins of GDP
Systems of national accounting originated in the UK in the 17th century, but
were only developed to the form we see today in the first half of the 20th
century. Economist Arthur Bowley, with assistance from Sir Josiah Stamp (who
worked for the Inland Revenue and was a keen advocate of better methods of
keeping statistics), used income and tax figures to produce a book called The
National Income, 1924. 4 Colin Clark made a much more comprehensive study of
national accounting in 1937, and established the measure that we now call gross
national product (GNP). 5
During World War II, the United Nations System of National Accounts
(UNSNA) was developed in the UK, and was subsequently adopted in the US
and by all other nations following the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944. This
accounting system, which counts money and produces GNP and GDP figures,
was further revised in 1953 and 1968.
The measurement of GNP was evolved in the UK during World War II to
help keep the focus on paying for the war effort and to ensure that Britain did