Life Is Better; It Isn't Better. Which Is It?

   I chose to interview my mother for this assignment and she has given me a lot of examples of how life has changed compared with my grandmother’s. The examples clearly proof that life is better now than the past.

   The first thing is education. People in the past, especially women, are satisfied with high school level education. However, in my mother’s generation, education is noted essential for judging someone. High school level education is not as adequate as a bachelor degree in order to get respect from society and to get reliable jobs. 

   The second example is transportation. In my grandmother’s generation, people need to use boats in order to get in or out of the city. There were not BTS, MRT, or whatsoever available now to us. Life was pretty tough back then, since if you want to go somewhere, you need to walk or ride on the boat, which will takes ages.

   The third is medicine. My mother said that she never had chicken pox before because vaccines are already available back in her time. On the other hand, my grandmother experienced chicken pox because vaccines have not yet been invented.  This also goes with other medicines, vaccinations, and antibiotics. Technological advances bolster human lives and increase our rate of survival.

   The fourth example is clothing. My grandmother is adept at sewing and making things associated with fabric. Why? As a matter of fact, back in her time processed clothing was very hard to find, very pricey, and sizing was poorly constructed. Most antediluvian people bought their own fabric and made clothes or bags by themselves. Years later, my mother’s generation provided more supply of clothing (but of course, not millions of brands like we have now), in which makes our lives easier.

   The last thing is the internet. There was no internet back in my grandmother’s days and also my mother’s when she was a student. The public library was like Wikipeida (but reliable) of that time, life was pretty tough for students back then since they need to travel to the library and wasted time finding the right books.

   Overall, I agree with my mother that life is getting better. Despite our loss of ability to steer boats, stronger ankles, our instructed immunity, ability to sew, and determination of finding stuffs (replaced my laziness and stronger fingers for typing). I still strongly agree that what we gain clearly canceled out what we lost.

Thailand GDP graphs

The Business Cycle

The 4 stages:

1. Recovery - GDP increases, unemployment rate decreases, aggregrate demand increases, price increases
2. Boom -Beginning of contraction, inflation
3. Recession - GDP decreases, unemployment rate increases, aggregrate demand decreases, price decreases
4. Trough - End of contraction, unemployment, the trough cannot go lower because there are still people who demand goods. The economy begins to recover again after trough

Is GDP An Obsolete Measure of Progress?

Major points:

• GDP doesn't measure: the general progress in health and education, the condition of public infrastructure, fuel efficiency, community and leisure.
• Because it's averaged, the GDP mystifies and masks the gap between rich and poor.
• What's good for the GDP is not always good for the individual, take health care: rising costs may be tough on families, but it boosts the GDP
• Happy Planet Index (HPI), which looks at the degree of human happiness generated per quantity of environment consumed is a better indicator of well-being than GDP
• The GDP is often precisely wrong in that it's not measuring progress, just the making of stuff. 

Link to the article

13.2 GDP Research: Thailand

The Circular Flow of Income

Ploy IA rough draft