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THE SOCIO-ENVIRO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM (SEES)
PEOPLE CENTRIC PROGRESS
PEOPLE MUST BE THE FOCUS OF BETTER SYSTEMIC OUTCOMES
PEOPLE / SOCIAL CAPITAL / QUALITY OF LIFE
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Determined in part by the INDIVIDUAL and FAMILY and FRIENDS
Determined in part by PLACE: Access to goods and services ... and community
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The Individual
Everybody matters
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The Family
The family an important part of the social structure
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Friends
A better quality of life for everyone
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The Community
Good friends and community positive for quality of life
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The Place
Everything comes together in a place ... or doesn't
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The Economy
The dignity of work, and source of everything to enable the good life
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Nature
The environment really matters ... for health and sustainability
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Happiness
Good for living long and well
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THE PEOPLE PERSPECTIVE
The purpose of everything should be to improve quality of life. It is the essence of humanity ... and should be the main measure of success.
An individual's wealth (financial capital) is only one contributing part of what makes up a person's quality of life ... but only a part.
Human capital in the present has been achieved by an individual's history … such things as parenting, nutritious food, good healthcare, good education, good surroundings, role models and so forth. Skills and experience are accumulated over time. There is a historic cost to getting these things, but the value accumulation is reflected in the present. Past earnings that are not spent but saved, factor into the human capital of the present.
Family and friends can be an important contribution to quality of life and an individual's human capital ... as well as the broader community.
The place also feeds into an individual's human capital. A place where there is no violence and is supportive of the individual adds to human capital. A place where there is a future full of opportunity factors into the state of human capital in the present.
The present value of the future depends on what the future looks like, but also depends on what the individual has done in the past to be in a position to take advantage of the future.
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THE ROLE OF WEALTH
Personal financial issues are not well understood by most people ... and massive amount of exploitation by banks, corporates and business in general.
An individual's wealth (financial capital) is only one contributing part of what makes up a person's quality of life ... an individual's human capital, but only a part.
Human capital in the present has been achieved by an individual's history … such things as parenting, nutritious food, good healthcare, good education, good surroundings, role models and so forth. Skills and experience are accumulated over time. There is a historic cost to getting these things, but the value accumulation is reflected in the present. Past earnings that are not spent but saved, factor into the human capital of the present.
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WHAT GOES INTO QUALITY OF LIFE
There are many components that go into an individual's Quality of Life.These are five of the most important:
- PAST / PREPARATION FOR LIFE
Genetics / Childhood / Education / Training / Experience
- THE STATE OF ONE'S LIFE
Today's situation ... everyone needs certain basics in order to survive. More does not always mean better. More that offsets a deficit is good, but more merely to satisfy an addiction can be terribly bad!
- FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES / POSSIBILITIES
The future ... tomorrow's opportunities ... depends on PLACE
- CONTRIBUTION
The added value from a person's activities ... depends on the capacities of the person and the opportunities and possibilities of the PLACE
- COST-OF-LIVING
The costs associated with a person's living ... some of these are the cost of essentials and that depends on the PLACE and some costs are the choice of the individual
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PEOPLE - STATE, CONTRIBUTION AND COST
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STATE ... HUMAN CAPITAL
A person ... a human being ... has a certain intrinsic value. This value is not normally expressed in money terms, in fact it is rarely numbered in any way at all.
An individual human life has a huge value. Young mothers often describe the value of their new baby as being 'priceless'.
For the purpose of numbering ... a human life may be assigned a value of 1,000,000 ... that is one million. This is not a million units of currency (e.g. dollars) but a specific measure related to human value or human capital.
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THE CONTRIBUTIONS THAT PEOPLE MAKE
A person has capabilities that are able to be used in order to do things that enable needs to be satisfied.
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THE ESSENTIAL BASIC COSTS OF LIVING
A person cannot survive without some basic needs ... food, water, shelter, clothes and some other supplies. These are the basic costs of human survival.
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OPTIMISING FOR QUALITY OF LIFE AND CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIETY
There is more to quality of life than having a lot of financial and material wealth ... or a lot of power.
Unfortunately during much of modern times there has been a move towards the 'financialization' of the economy and society based on the wrong idea that more and more of money, wealth and power is the primary metric of success.
In the early 1980s there was a 'normal' distribution of both wealth and income in the population of the United States. There were a smallish number of very wealthy / high income and a smallish number of very poor / struggling people with most people in the middle. Over the past 40+ years this has changed. The smallish number of very wealthy / high income remain a smallish number, but the anount of their wealth / income has grown by an order of magnitude. The middle wealth / middle income population remains the biggest number of people, but their average wealth / income has declined substantially and many have joined the very poor and struggling population.
I attribute this to widespread 'financialization' of the economy and the complete failure of the Reaganesque idea of 'Trickle Down'. The assumption that more financial wealth in the national economy would enable a better quality of life for people at large is a convenient political talking point, but one that has little data to support it.
In fact, looking back, the United States has a long run of quality of life improvement from the time of World War II to the end of the 1960s when the US economy was challenged by and unable to withstand generally more effficient international competition and then the 1973 OPEC oil shock which made major parts of the US industrial base globally uncompetitive. Almost the whole of the US economy used energy substantially less efficiently than the rest of the world ... and as oil went up in price, American business went down in profit!
Business and the investment community had a bad decade in the 1970s. But during this time Nixon and Kissinger engaged in 'ping-pong' diplomacy which resulted in a major diplomatic 'thaw' between the United States and the People's Democratic Republic of China! ... and in due course a major rebalancing of the global economy. This rebalancing has enabled some parts of the US populace to 'win' economically, but most of the US populace has experienced more economic hardship than before these changes.
For several generations of Americans, it was expected that children would be more economically prosperous than their parents, but this changed in the 1970s and most children have been doing 'less well' than their parents since that time.
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