“If you want to understand water, don’t ask a fish,” goes the parable about how the things most central to our lives are often the hardest to see because they’re everywhere around us.
In these turbulent times, when we are focused on our day-to-day lives, we often fail to notice that the economy is the water we swim in, and it’s polluted. Like fish unaware of water, we may not see how deeply it is affecting our lives. Many of us, me included, face economic uncertainty, which directly affects our ability to meet our expenses and indirectly strains our relationships, health, and sense of well-being.
The future of Gen Z and Millennials is overshadowed by student debt, unaffordable housing and job losses. Seniors like me live with uncertainty about the continuation of Social Security and Medicare, and about cuts to social services. Inflation eats away at our fixed income. I live in dread of not having the resources I need to live comfortably as I grow older. We all have our stories.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The United States is wealthy enough to eliminate poverty, provide universal healthcare, and make public post-secondary education tuition-free. The barrier is not a lack of resources. The top 10% hold about 60% of the wealth, and the top 1% about 27%, so the issue is less scarcity than distribution and policy choices.
Our society equates wealth production with economic health. The more we produce the healthier we consider our economy to be. The primary measurement for economic activity is gross domestic product, commonly known as GDP. It is the total monetary value of the wealth produced over a specific period. For example, the U.S. GDP in 2024 was $29.18 trillion. The GDP in Franklin County was $3.7 billion. The mean household GDP in the county was $117,300.
If GDP grows, the economy is considered healthy. GDP does not take into account whether growth is sustainable, whether people are better off, whether wealth is broadly shared or concentrated, whether environmental resources are being depleted, or whether businesses are investing for the future rather than benefiting from a temporary surge. Most importantly, it does not tell us how the economy affects the quality of our daily lives.
Using GDP as the sole measure of economic health is like driving with only the rearview mirror. It tells us where we have been, not where we are headed. Yet GDP remains the accepted, unquestioned standard measure of our economic health.
For most of us, our personal finances are something we don’t discuss. For some, it is due to a sense of shame. We don’t have enough, so we compare ourselves to those who do. Or, for those who do have financial security, we feel we have to hide it from those who don’t. So, we go silent about our finances. Yet it is precisely our silence that helps maintain this inequality.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Our stories matter. We don’t have to carry this economic burden all alone. Sharing those stories connects us to one another. In that sharing, we get a profound sense of the vastness of income inequality in our society and how it affects our lives.
From this space of connection, we can begin to see life beyond our superficial differences, to see what we hold more deeply in common and move beyond GDP. We can begin to redefine economic health to embrace economic justice and, in taking that action, we will be taking another step towards a safer, generous, and more equitable world.
Christopher “Kiffer” Sikes is a 40-year resident of Franklin County and founder of Common Capital, a nonprofit that finances small businesses and community projects in western Massachusetts. Any comments are appreciated and can be sent to kiffersikes@gmail.com