Inclusive Accounting

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Discussion

Jessie Henshaw:

"Another approach is simply to do “inclusive accounting”, to internalize all the measurable externalities for economic accounting. Present GDP accounting doesn’t count any of them. If inclusive accounting were used at least the economy could be guided by truthful estimates of profit and loss for the economy as a whole. The current catastrophe could then be seen as produced by the opposite, “exclusive accounting” that was the fist application of computer models to business decision making, defining “the bottom line” exclusively in terms of maximizing current account profits, and so removing the consideration of any associated distributed costs to society of supporting such businesses.

One “inclusive accounting” model is the “World SDG” for maximizing the lasting profitability of the system as a whole. It mainly offers a way to honestly and accurately attribute responsibility for the future costs of accumulating “externalities”. Then self-interest legislation could support wise investor choices and rule out unwise ones for the common interest, such as by giving capital gains tax preference to investments in truly sustainable economic infrastructures, and prohibiting the reinvestment of gains from clearly unsustainable business practices. Like Christmas toys, of course, “some assembly may be required”. Still, it’s a rather practical approach that could at least quickly expose the true scale of long term societal liabilities for current investments for short term profits, which could then be reported with with normal annual business reports so everyone sees the true whole impact of those operations."