There are always buzzwords in politics, and that of this campaign is without a doubt ‘social security’. But there is another buzzword that appears in various party programs and even in the title of the Budget Memorandum: ‘broad prosperity’. This term, launched thirty years ago by the SER, should complement GDP as a way to measure what is of value. Economic growth does not necessarily go hand in hand with things that we consider important, such as biodiversity and social cohesion, to name just two crossroads.
Since 2019, CBS has been creating a ‘broad prosperity dashboard’, in which the status of various indicators is calculated. And this year we are included in the Budget Memorandum for the first time ‘fact sheets’ which show per ministry how the Netherlands scores on those indicators, compared to previous years and other countries.
In itself, I think calculating things other than economic growth is a good idea. In the corona crisis we saw what happens when only one part of the cost-benefit analysis is quantifiable (then: the infection figures). Numbers often beat words (think ‘loneliness’ or ‘future generations’), because they are more concrete. It helps the discussion if those words can also be measured.
Yet I see a problem with the concept as it is currently used. The Budget Memorandum states: “Government policy is aimed at increasing broad prosperity for everyone.” This sounds like every right-thinking person agrees on what policies require broad prosperity. But is that so? The party programs show something different. The VVD only mentions the term in connection with “technological innovation”. BBB defines broad prosperity as “a just society, a healthy economy, with wages based on work.” The CDA uses “selective growth” as a synonym for broad prosperity, and states that this requires labor migration to be curbed. GroenLinks-PvdA and D66 both use the term very often, especially in connection with sustainability.
Parties therefore think differently about the importance and content of broad prosperity. But that subjectivity is not reflected in the Budget Memorandum. The fact sheets contain helpful green and red arrows to indicate whether the score is going in the good or bad direction. Sometimes they make sense, such as with the suicide rate: the lower the better, okay. But with others I think: are these facts? I don’t think it is a fact that you should have as many highly educated people as possible. Society currently needs more plumbers than extra communication experts. Nor is it a fact that it is better if as many people as possible think positively about immigrants, as one fact sheet states. The General Considerations already showed that many faction leaders do not even think positively about this. And especially strange is the assumption that it is good if more students from outside Europe come to the Netherlands.
Kim Putters, chairman of the SER, said in an email last May reading that broad prosperity offers “a long-term vision” of “good coexistence for everyone.” According to him, this requires “a broadly supported consensus.” But both the choice of an indicator and the weighting between different indicators are political, and there will therefore not always be consensus on this. This became clear again this week when the VVD sided with car owners with the extended reduction in excise duties on petrol, and therefore against broad prosperity indicators such as the well-being of future generations.
It is good that CBS provides the figures, but I think they can leave the red and green arrows alone. More data is welcome, but as a starting point for a political assessment of values and interests. And I’m not the only one who thinks this. After a survey among economists about broad prosperity, the trade journal wrote ESB two years ago: “Economists mention risks that result from the subjectivity of the concept of prosperity as risks of steering towards prosperity. It is not clear what prosperity exactly means and what it encompasses, which makes it difficult to formulate policy.”
In the meantime, politicians and policymakers pretend that subjectivity does not exist. In this respect too, broad prosperity resembles social security: people suggest unity, but in practice they continue to ride on their own hobbyhorses. That’s a shame. ‘Broad prosperity’ thus becomes a new way of talking past each other, instead of a tool for a good conversation.
A version of this article also appeared in the September 23, 2023 newspaper.