What Really Counts
A Film by Kent Martin
I have really enjoyed watching this documentary. People need hope
and alternatives as their daily bread.
Dame Marilyn Waring
author of If Women Counted
The real measure of a society is not the number of obscenely wealthy
people and the GDP, but the status of the poorest, weakest, most
vulnerable among us. That's what Ron Colman, Jigme Thinley and the
GNH are about.
Dr. David Suzuki
Scientist, Writer and Broadcaster
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been called the most important statistic in human history. But many think our reliance on this statistic -
along with its demand for eternal economic growth - is leading humanity down a path of war, poverty, extreme climate change and species
extinctions, including our own. In this time of great uncertainty
What Really Counts tells the story of two people trying to change the
course of human history.
We go on a journey from the West to the East through the world of global economics with Ronald Colman, a visionary political scientist from
Canada and Jigme Y Thinley, the former Prime Minister of the
Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. One developed a Genuine Progress
Index (GPI) for Nova Scotia and the other initiated the policy of
Gross National Happiness (GNH) in Bhutan.
Both focused on methods for measuring the well being of humanity to supplant the GDP. They have spent decades – working in local
communities and in sovereign states and then taking their ideas all the
way to the United Nations - working together trying to change the
destructive way of thinking about economics predicated on the idea of continual growth. They helped to bring sanity and hope to our planet
with a simple common sense vision in suggesting we count
What Really Counts.
