Ford adds battery capacity, LFP chemistry to scale global EV business


Jaclyn Trop
July 21, 2022·


Ford said Thursday it has shored up its battery supply chain as part of its global strategy to sell more than 2 million EVs annually by 2026.

The automaker, which is investing $50 billion to scale its battery-electric portfolio through 2026, said it plans to boost battery capacity, shorten its supply chain and use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for some of its EVs. LFP batteries are a less expensive cell chemistry growing in popularity among automakers competing for share in the burgeoning EV segment.

Ford said the moves will help it remain on track to meet its short-term goal of ramping up EV production to 600,000 units by 2023 and 2 million units by 2026. The company said it has sourced 70% of battery capacity to meet its 2026 sales target so far.

Meeting its EV production goals could require about 8,000 job cuts, according to unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg.

Executives did not address layoffs directly during a briefing with analysts and media Thursday but said that speed and agility is crucial for Ford’s battery-electric Model e division. Cutting out bureaucracy means they can close deals in days, rather than months, said Lisa Drake, vice president of EV industrialization at Ford Model e.

“Believe it or not to move fast in this space, smaller is better,” she said. “A smaller team can move faster than a larger team.”

Lithium iron phosphate batteries

Ford said it will begin incorporating LFP batteries into its portfolio while continuing to use the nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) chemistry currently powering its EVs. As the cheaper alternative, LFP presents a potential path for the mass EV market, according to analysts.

CATL, the world’s largest battery supplier, will provide LFP battery packs for Ford Mustang Mach-E SUVs in North America starting next year, followed by F-150 Lightning pickup trucks in early 2024.

LFP batteries provide cost advantages over NCM but are less powerful due to their lower energy density. The chemistry may seem a puzzling choice to underpin two of Ford’s most muscular models, but “these standard-range batteries offer customers many years of operation with minimal loss of range after many charge cycles,” Drake said. “That benefits owners who need to charge often, like our commercial customers.”

Using LFP will help reduce Ford’s reliance on scarce critical minerals such as nickel and cobalt, while trimming 10 to 15% from its battery materials costs, according to Drake.

The company declined to say how many of its EVs will use LFP chemistry but said it has signed non-binding MOUs with lithium suppliers Liontown Resources and Rio Tinto.

Batteries have become VC and PE’s most electric investment opportunity

Battery suppliers

Ford also said it has upped its contracts with NCM battery suppliers in order to meet its late-2023 production target. LG Energy will double its NCM battery capacity to supply Ford’s Mach-E and E-Transit van.

SK On has increased production at its Georgia facility to supply Ford with more NCM cells. It will also supply additional battery packs from its factory in Hungary to power the F-150 Lightning and E-Transit through 2023.

That’s in addition to the deal Ford and SK On closed last week to create an $11.4 billion joint venture to build and operate the Blue Oval City complex in Stanton, Tennessee, and two EV battery plants in Glendale, Kentucky.

Ford also announced Thursday a non-binding agreement with CATL to explore partnering on LFP batteries in Chinese and European markets.

Raw Materials

As Ford scales its EV production, it must reinvent its supply chain by sourcing raw battery materials directly, according to executives.

“Battery cell manufacturing capacity is the foundation of our EV business,” Drake said. “We have direct-sourced our lithium and nickel to scale battery production more quickly and keep the volumes and the cost more stable over time.”

The automaker said Thursday it has sourced most of the nickel it needs through 2026 and it has signed non-binding MOUs with mining partners including Vale Canada, PT Vale Indonesia, Huayou Cobalt and BHP.

LIKE EVEREST BEFORE IT

There Are Conga Lines and Huge Crowds on K2 Now

The “Savage Mountain” saw its busiest day ever earlier this week, as more than 100 climbers reached the summit

Ben Ayers

Jul 28, 2022

On July 21 at 10:45 P.M. Pakistan time, five climbers stood on the summit of 28,251-foot K2. They were the first mountaineers to reach the peak’s top during the 2022 summer climbing season, after spending more than 24 hours battling their way to the summit. For Pasdawa Sherpa, Chhiring Namgyal Sherpa, Siddhi Ghising, Dorjee Gyelzen Sherpa, and Rinji Sherpa, turning around wasn’t an option, as hundreds of climbers further down on the mountain were relying on their work. This team of elite high-altitude workers from Nepal had fixed a series of ropes that would be later used by climbers waiting in cramped tents at Camp 4.

By the time the rope fixers began their descent, a horde of climbers was already working its way towards the summit, leading to what was to become the most crowded day on the peak.

One of the climbers ascending the mountain was Nepali guide Mingma Gyalge Sherpa, better known as Mingma G, who captured a video on Instagram that was quickly circulated around the globe. The video showed dozens of climbers waiting in a so-called “conga line” on the mountain’s infamous bottleneck couloir at 26,900 feet.

“Many of the climbers were expected to go to the summit on 20 and 21 July but there was no route fixed to the summit until 21 July at night so everyone made the summit push for July 22, that made the traffic jam,” Mingma G said in a WhatsApp message.

The scene marked a historic moment for K2, long called the “savage mountain” in climbing circles. In previous decades, K2 was off-limits to all but the most seasoned mountaineers due to its extreme danger and steepness. Now, K2 has exploded in popularity, driven by a generation of paying clients that seek a greater challenge than Mount Everest, and a coterie of expedition operators who specialize in getting climbers to the top—regardless of the dangers found along the way.

By the end of the day on July 22, well over 100 climbers had reached K2’s summit, which is notorious for brutal weather and a high fatality rate. In the ensuing days, this number continued to rise. As of Thursday morning, 145 climbers have notched the summit since July 21, a figure that has added 30 percent more total summits to the mountain’s tally since it was first climbed nearly 70 years ago. Prior to the historic day, just 302 people had stood on the summit.

But this bonanza on the mountains produced the cringe-worthy moment on the bottleneck, and other scenes of crowding.

“I never thought this would happen on K2,” said Himalayan Database director and mountaineer, Bili Bierling, when she saw Mingma G’s video.

The bottleneck is notorious for danger. In February, 2021 it claimed the lives of three elite mountaineers: Muhammad Ali Sadpara, John Snorri, and Juan Pablo Mohr. The deaths sent shockwaves through the mountaineering community. In the video, the line of climbers stood below a soaring wall of seracs that are known to send tons of ice crashing down the mountain at irregular intervals. The video also echoes a viral photo shared by Nirmal ‘Nims’ Purja in 2019 of an overcrowded Everest summit ridge. While in Purja’s photo the climbers are stacked on an open ridge and surrounded by blue skies, on K2 the traffic jam was positioned directly beneath the dangerous seracs.

The video generated more than 200 comments, and a simmering debate about the mountain’s popularity this year. “K2 is not Everest—it cannot be commercialized like this. What a pity,” read one comment on the video.

Pemba Sherpa, the founder of 8K Expeditions, a leading Nepali outfitter, told Outside that the increase in climbers this year was due to multiple dynamics, among them pent-up demand that occurred during the pandemic.

“So many people are on the way to climb 14 peaks,” Pemba said. “And so many people were stopped because of COVID and the financial downturn. Now, in 2022…. people are coming to K2.”

Pemba estimated there to be more than 200 total permits for the mountain this year. But he downplayed the danger caused by the crowding on the mountain. The conga line at the bottleneck was a large group that had been traveling together, and not a queue of disparate teams trying to reach the top.

“Two hundred people on a mountain of that size will get spread out,” he said. “The issue is when everyone wants to climb on the same day.”

When asked about his video, Mingma G echoed Pemba’s sentiment, saying that his company has seen a steady increase in interest for guiding on K2 in recent years. “Since 2017, we have seen summits every year on K2. It wasn’t like this previously,” he said. “And COVID-19 also increased the number of climbers on K2.”

Thanks to a patch of unusually stable weather in the Karakoram, summits on K2 have continued throughout the week. Notable ascents include Pasdawa Sherpa who, as part of the rope fixing team, became the fastest person to summit the five tallest peaks on the planet.

Norwegian climber Kristin Harila notched the eighth peak on her quest to climb all 14 peaks over 8,000 meters in six months and to draw attention to the role of women in high-altitude mountaineering. To prove her point, three women summited without the use of supplemental oxygen—Grace Teng from Taiwan, Andorran climber Stefi Troguet, and He Jing from China.

Huge crowds may be the norm on some of the world’s highest peaks this year. Thanks to a recent report by German archivist Eberhard Jurgalski on his blog 8000ers.com, that offered convincing evidence that the vast majority of recent ascents of Manaslu (26,781 feet) were, in fact, a few meters below the actual summit, operators in Nepal are expecting a wave of climbers to return to the mountain this fall. Sources told Outside that they expect to see several hundred climbers on that peak later this fall.

“For my company alone, we have 50 clients already signed up.” said Pemba Sherpa. “Everyone is coming to repeat Manaslu.”

How Aleister Crowley, the Infamous Occultist, Led the First ...

https://www.openculture.com › 2018/08 › aleister-crow...

Aug 16, 2018 — After the failed K2 attempt, he would only make one more daring expedition with Eckenstein, in 1905, a climb up the Himalayan mountain of ...

K2 | First Attempt | 1902 Expedition - Altitude Pakistan

http://altitudepakistan.blogspot.com › K2

Nov 30, 2012 — Aleister Crowley was a crazy soul; an occultist with queer views on subjects of magic and faith. Eckenstein was a member of Martin Conway's 1892 ...

1905 Kanchenjunga expedition - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › 1905_Kanchenjunga_...

In April 1905 he proposed his plans to the British occultist Aleister Crowley, with whom he had participated in Oscar Eckenstein's K2 expedition in 1902.

Legends Series: Aleister Crowley - Explorersweb »

https://explorersweb.com › legends-series-aleister-crowley

Jun 11, 2020 — Legends Series: Aleister Crowley. June 11, 2020 Ash Routen Climbing | Expeditions | Himalaya | K2 | Mountain | Mountaineering.

TIL Aleister Crowley climbed up K2, reaching an altitude of ...

https://www.reddit.com › alpinism › comments › til_ale...

Sept 20, 2015 — TIL Aleister Crowley climbed up K2, reaching an altitude of 6,100m before he and his climbing companions decided to turn back. In 1903. A link to his writings ...

English occultist, poet, and novelist Aleister Crowley bathing ...

Jul 4, 2017

Pictures of Crowley's 1902 expedition on K2 : r/thelema - Reddit

Aug 30, 2015

More results from www.reddit.com

KILLER TOO

Canadian, Australian climbers die on Pakistan's K2, world's 2nd-highest mountain

FILE - A photo of K2, the world's second-highest mountain, is displayed on a cell phone in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Munir Ahmed
The Associated Press
 July 28, 2022 

ISLAMABAD -

An Australian and a Canadian mountain climber died last week in northern Pakistan while attempting to scale K2, the world's second-highest mountain, officials from the two countries said Thursday.

The death of Matthew Eakin was announced by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which expressed its "condolences to his family and friends." His body was found through drone video on Thursday.

Canada's foreign affairs department said in a statement that it was aware of the death of a Canadian in Pakistan. It provided no further details, citing privacy reasons and only saying that officials were "providing consular assistance to the family".

Earlier, a Pakistani mountaineering official and the Canadian Press said the body of Richard Cartier, who went missing in a separate incident on the same mountain on July 19, had finally also been spotted by a search team on K2. Cartier was 60 and an experienced climber.

K2, on the Chinese-Pakistani border in the Karakorum Range, has one of the deadliest records, with most climbers dying on the descent, where the slightest mistake can trigger an avalanche and become fatal. Only a few hundred have successfully reached its summit. In contrast, Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, has been summited more than 9,000 times.

Eakin's devastated friends posted tributes on social media to honor him, saying his death was a huge loss to the mountaineering community. One friend, Felicity Symons, said about their 23 years of friendship: "I will always see your smile in the clouds. Rest easy my dear friend on the mountains you loved."

Karrar Haidri, the deputy chief of the Pakistan Alpine Club, which coordinates search and rescue missions with Pakistan's government and military, confirmed the deaths of Eakin and Cartier.

"We extend our condolences to the friends and family members of the Australian and Canadian climbers who died on K2," Haidri told The Associated Press.

Also last week, a third climber, Ali Akbar Sakki from Afghanistan, died on K2. Sakki suffered a heart attack while trying to scale the summit, Haidri said.

The Canadian Embassy in Islamabad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Dawn, one of Pakistan's English-language newspapers, reported earlier this week that the two climbers had been spotted between Camp 1 and Camp 2 on K2 after they both went missing on July 19 in separate incidents.

K2 is also among the coldest and windiest of climbs. At places along the route, climbers must navigate nearly sheer rock faces rising 80 degrees, while avoiding frequent and unpredictable avalanches.

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'He lived his passion to the end': Quebec alpinist dies on world's second-highest mountain

Pakistan officials say 3 climbers missing on K2 are dead

Women mountain climbers from Pakistan, Iran reach K2 summit

Pakistani mountaineer Samina Baig flashes a victory sign while she poses for a photograph outside a hotel, in Skardu, Pakistan, on June 17, 2021. Baig from Pakistan and another from Iran appear to be the first females from their countries to reach the top of K2, one of the world's highest and most dangerous summits, a mountaineering official said Friday, July 22, 2022. (AP Photo/M.Z. Balti) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Munir Ahmed

July 22, 2022·

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A woman from Pakistan and another from Iran appeared to be the first from their countries to scale K2 on Friday, the world's second-highest mountain and one of the most dangerous summits, a mountaineering official said. A second Pakistani woman scaled the summit minutes later.

Samina Baig, a 32-year-old from a remote northern village in Pakistan, was the first to hoist her country's green and white flag atop the peak of the 28,250 foot-high (8,610 meter) K2.

Iran's Afsaneh Hesamifard followed shortly after and was hailed for her achievement in Farsi-language posts on social media. According to Iranian media, she became only the third woman to scale Mount Everest in May.

The two were among several women to successfully reach K2's peak on Friday, according to Karrar Haidri, chief officer of the Pakistan Alpine Club, which helps coordinate the climbs from the government side and responds in the event of an emergency.

Haidri said a second Pakistani female climber, Naila Kiyani, was among the team of women to reach the top of K2 but it appears that Baig had scaled the summit a few minutes earlier.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif congratulated both Pakistani women, saying they proved that women were not behind men in the sports of mountain climbing. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan congratulated the Pakistani women on Twitter while the Iranian diplomatic mission in Pakistan tweeted congratulations to Hesamifard.

K2, on the Chinese-Pakistani border in the Karakorum Range, has one of the deadliest records, with most climbers dying on the descent, where the slightest mistake can trigger an avalanche and become fatal. Only a few hundred have successfully reached its summit. In contrast, Mount Everest has been summited more than 9,000 times.

Separately, Haidri said Afghan climber, Ali Akbar Sakki, died on Thursday due to a heart attack while attempting to scale K2. He was part of the team of climbers who reached its summit Friday.

Considered extremely difficult to climb, K2 is not only the second-highest mountain after Mount Everest, its ascent and descent are considered much more challenging that the world's highest.

K2 is also the coldest and windiest of climbs. At places along the route, climbers must navigate nearly sheer rock faces rising 80 degrees, while avoiding frequent and unpredictable avalanches.

The latest record comes a day after Nepalese climber Sanu Sherpa set a new mountaineering record for twice reaching the peak of each of the world's 14 highest mountains.

Earlier this month, Pakistan's military airlifted two Pakistani climbers, including the man who became the youngest to scale K2 to safety after the pair went missing during an expedition scaling Nanga Parbat, known as “Killer Mountain” because of its dangerous conditions.

One of the greatest (SIC) financial historians alive says central bankers have been incompetent for decades and inflation is our ‘big hangover’

Will Daniel
Fri, July 29, 2022 

Who or what is responsible for the rampant inflation plaguing the global economy?

President Biden has argued the key culprit is Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine, going so far as to call the current rise in U.S. consumer prices “Putin’s price hike.”

On the other hand, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says that high inflation is a result of the toxic combination of supply-chain issues brought about by the pandemic, COVID-19 lockdowns in China, the war in Ukraine, and the strong labor market.

But Edward Chancellor, a financial historian, journalist, and investment strategist who has been described as “one of the great financial writers of our era,” argues central bankers are to blame. In his view, central banks’ unsustainable policies have created an “everything bubble,” leaving the global economy with an inflation “hangover.”

Chancellor explained his theory, which is presented in his new book, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest, in a recent interview with The Market’s Mark Dittli.

“There’s always the idea that speculative bubbles are formed around the invention of a new technology,” he said. “What I’m doing in my book is leaving aside the tech aspects and the psychological aspects of bubbles, and concentrating solely on the monetary underpinnings. What I argue is that when interest rates are pushed down too low, people are driven into speculative endeavors and chase returns.”

To understand Chancellor’s argument, we have to take a step back to the years following the Great Financial Crisis. After 2008, inflation in most developed nations was low, and central banks around the world were more concerned with ensuring a global economic recovery and the negative impact of deflation.

As a result, interest rates were held at historically low levels, and some central banks, like the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan, instituted a controversial policy called quantitative easing (QE), which involves buying government bonds and mortgage-backed securities in hopes of increasing the money supply and spurring lending and investment.

Chancellor explained how during these first rounds of QE, the money the Fed created “never fed through to the real economy,” leading central bankers to ignore inflation and become “complacent.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, however, and QE was ramped up again, it was a different story. Central banks around the world cut interest rates and “printed collectively around $8 trillion.” The issue this time was that the money was used to “finance roughly the same amount of government spending,” which contributed to “the largest peacetime deficits in history.”

On top of that, near-zero interest rates and excess liquidity in the financial system encouraged investors to buy risky assets, creating an “everything bubble,” as evidenced by the extreme rise in tech stocks, cryptocurrencies, meme stocks, and even collectibles like baseball cards in 2020 and 2021.

“And, surprise, surprise, we now have rising and unstable inflation,” Chancellor said. “We are now waking up to a big hangover from this monetary extremism.”

Chancellor argues that central bankers believed they could maintain near-zero interest rates and QE without causing a rise in consumer prices because inflation had remained so low, for so long.

“And why was it low? Because of their sound monetary policies. They referred it back to themselves! And now, the moment inflation goes out of control, they say: ‘Oh, it’s not our responsibility, it has to do with Ukraine, or supply chains, or China’s lockdowns,’” he said.

Chancellor went on to argue that central banks’ actions have facilitated speculative trading, instead of a focus on real economic growth. It’s an unsustainable monetary policy that just won’t work moving forward, he said.

“Who knows, perhaps we will all be a bit more grown-up in the future. What we need is a better understanding of economics and finance. So that we can live in a world where finance is mainly used for allocating capital for productive purposes rather than generating speculative paper profits,” he said.

Although central banks worldwide have begun raising rates this year to combat inflation, Chancellor fears they may revert to their old ways—and he argues if they do, capitalism itself could be at risk.

“The alternative is a world in which what we have seen over the past 12 years is a prelude to ever greater central planning of economic and political life. If we were to go down that route, I would say that capitalism as we know it would not survive.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Bill Ackman calls carried interest loophole an 'embarrassment' after new tax bill

Alexandra Semenova

·Reporter

Fri, July 29, 2022 

Washington Democrats may have found an unlikely ally in their bid to end a long time tax rule enjoyed by some of Wall Street’s richest executives: hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman.

The Pershing Square Capital founder on Thursday slammed the so-called carried interest “loophole” – a tax treatment that allows private equity and hedge fund managers to pay a reduced tax rate on their share of gains from fund investments.

"The carried interest loophole is a stain on the tax code," Ackman said in a tweet. "It does not help small businesses, pension funds, other investors in hedge funds or private equity and everyone in the industry knows it."

"It is an embarrassment and it should end now."

Ackman’s tweets come after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) reached an agreement this week on sweeping fiscal legislation that, among other issues, takes aim at the carried interest tax preference, which Democrats have lobbied to end for 15 years as part of efforts to reform tax law.

Current tax rules allow a share of investment managers’ incomes, if held for longer than three years, to be classified as a capital gain, which is taxed at roughly 20% instead of the 37% top rate on ordinary salary and wage income.

Critics argue that treating carried interest earnings as ordinary compensation allows wealthy Americans to unfairly defer and reduce the taxes they pay, while proponents argue it encourages long-term investment.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to reporters following the Senate Democrats weekly policy lunch at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., July 19, 2022. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

"Over 74% of private equity investment went to small businesses last year,” American Investment Council president and CEO Drew Maloney said in a statement. “As small business owners face rising costs and our economy faces serious headwinds, Washington should not move forward with a new tax on the private capital that is helping local employers survive and grow.”

The deal would see carried interest taxed as regular income if passed, and is estimated by Senate Democrats to generate $14 billion in revenue over the next ten years.

The latest aim at Wall Street’s favorite tax rule comes after a separate bill proposed last year that attempted to end the tax break, the Carried Interest Fairness Act, failed to advance.

Other ultra-wealthy proponents in favor of changing the rules so that private equity and hedge fund managers pay higher taxes include Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

How the U.S. may be overemphasizing the decline in GDP

How our 'GDP complex' prevents us from asking — happiness or growth?: Morning Brief

Andy Serwer with Dylan Croll
Sat, July 30, 2022 

All the hand-wringing this week over whether or not the U.S. economy has fallen into recession lacked an important consideration: What if the measure of GDP we're all focused on is itself massively flawed?

It’s a heretical question, because there’s a 'GDP complex' at work here.

There's an entire apparatus — economists, bankers, government officials, and prognosticators — of folks whose livelihoods are predicated on measuring GDP, maintained as the be-all and end-all method for measuring a country’s economic, or even societal, health.

And, of course, GDP growth is never quite 'right.' It’s either too fast or slow, and these parties are always ready to help fix things.

Leaving aside the experts’ deficiencies in predicting or fixing, by fixating on GDP this august group often misses items like sustainability and quality of life.

"[GDP] is a shortcut, it's not comprehensive enough," economist Mohamed El-Erian told me recently. "It’s a cognitive trap. We've all gotten used to measuring things by GDP, and we're having a huge problem getting out of that. Also the nature of GDP growth is important. Is it inclusive? It’s a useful measure, but it is just a tiny perspective into an economy."

Mohamed El-Erian speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 1, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

"What we are now concerned about has to do with the quality of the output of our economy, the quality of the food we eat, the quality of the air we breathe," says David Pilling, author of the 2018 book "The Growth Delusion," which explored our societal obsession with economic growth. "The only way of increasing the GDP of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, is to play it twice the speed so you can have more of it."

Before you accuse me of going crunchy granola on you, know that we do look beyond GDP in some instances.

Example: The fastest way for a factory to grow is to keep costs as low as possible which means dumping toxic waste in the nearby river. Sure we don’t do that today, but we could do much more.

Questioning GDP, though, begs an even more fundamental question: Does an economy need to grow? It's a point that’s been debated at least as far back as John Stuart Mill in the mid 19th century. More recently Herman Daly, a former senior economist for the World Bank, has been a leading voice in the 'steady state' movement, which he spoke to in a recent New York Times interview.

There’s a ton of interesting stuff in there from Daly, like: "Earth is not expanding. We don’t get new materials, and we don’t export stuff to space. So you have a steady-state Earth, and if you don’t recognize that, well, there’s an education problem."

Holistic socio-economic models haven’t been widely adopted of course, with some notable exceptions.

In 1972, Bhutan abandoned GDP as its measure of economic progress and replaced it with…happiness. The Guardian reports: “[Bhutan] has championed a new approach to development, which measures prosperity through formal principles of gross national happiness (GNH) and the spiritual, physical, social and environmental health of its citizens and natural environment."

Much has been written about the Bhutanese experiment (here and here) and there are shortcomings, but even its critics have to acknowledge its successes. New Zealand, for its part, now has a "Wellbeing Budget."

Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge poses with his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge in front of the Paro Taktsang Monastery, Bhutan, April 15, 2016. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton

Vox notes: “To Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the purpose of government spending is to ensure citizens' health and life satisfaction, and that — not wealth or economic growth — is the metric by which a country’s progress should be measured. GDP alone, she said, 'does not guarantee improvement to our living standards' and nor does it ‘take into account who benefits and who is left out.'"

"The really important thing which New Zealand understands is that subjective well-being data can be used to unlock the policy situation," says John Helliwell, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia.

Some U.S. economists scoff Bhutan and New Zealand (or is it Aotearoa?): "Fringe economies," kind of stuff. These same dismal scientists disparage Italy, Spain, and France too, which to my mind have budgeted — inadvertently to a degree — along these lines for centuries. And as I pointed out, they’re decent places to live too.

GDP is hardly a hallowed metric, nor is it infallible.

On the first count, remember that up until 1991, we used to use GNP (gross national product) to measure the economy. As for fallibility, look to Ireland and its "Leprechaun economic" episode — a phrase coined by Paul Krugman after the country reported GDP growth of 26.3% in 2015, the result of massive tax sheltering schemes by multinational companies, in particular, it seems, Apple.

Two years later, Ireland replaced GDP with Modified GNI (Gross National Income).

But the "GDP complex" doesn’t have to resort to such extremes to win at this game.

Fixing low or non-growing GDP through fiscal policy (cutting taxes) and monetary policy (cutting interest rates) disproportionately helps the shareholder class, which includes the aforementioned economists, bankers, government officials, and prognosticators. Those tools do not directly address life expectancy, infant mortality, drug addiction, murder, and suicide rates. No country obsesses more over GDP data than the U.S., and yet our quality of life relative to other countries (see here and here) is a shocking embarrassment.

"GDP is weighted toward the people whose incomes are higher. It's their experience that is dominating the GDP," says Richard Easterlin, professor emeritus of economics at USC. "In the case of happiness, it doesn't matter whether you're a shareholder, or farmer. Each of you counts the same."

Is it possible to have strong GDP growth and high quality of life across a society?

Some might argue that we used to in the United States — though huge portions of our population had a paucity of civil rights back in those "good old days." Singapore perhaps, but it also has limited civil liberties.

So, which would you rather have: strong GDP growth and poor quality of life for a majority of citizens, or find another measure that helps raise all ships?

I think I’m on board with the latter.