Genuine Progress with Obama?

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Thank the Universe the elections in the United States are over!!!  We can finally get back to work and play.  So what’s next? How are we going to know if we are making Genuine Progress? How will we know if we are better off, healthier, and happier in the upcoming years? We still have a lot of issues to address including, but not limited to, the economy, our environment, growing income inequality, social cohesiveness, health, and happiness.  The world’s economy is on shaky ground.  The foundation is flawed and the measures of success faulty.  Not only do we need a new approach for sustainable social and economic growth and development, but we also need a new method of measuring our progress.  The Genuine Progress Indicator is one such method which can, and likely should, be used in place of the Gross Domestic Product.  Vermont is the first state in the USA to adopt this index as a way of assessing economic progress.  Bhutan uses the Gross National Happiness index to measure and guide development.  Professor Dennis Riley, political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, offers his perspective on the concepts in these indices and the next four years with Obama.

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Professor Dennis Riley

Professor Dennis Riley
Coming to the realization that to find a viable career he would have to find one in which a lack of talent would be easy​ to conceal or largely irrelevant, Dennis Riley quickly went from baseball player to baseball coach to baseball announcer to lawyer to city manager. Amazingly, he had made this remarkable progression by the age of 21 and without ever actually performing any of them as a professional. Well, he did get paid $10 per game as play by play man for Lodi California’s Post 22 American Legion baseball games in the summers of 1963 and 1964. Fortunately, the intervention of Professor Edwin James Stillings in the spring of 1965 brought Riley around to the idea of becoming a college professor. Hence the PhD in 1971 and stints at Gonzaga University from 1969-1973, the University of Minnesota, Duluth from 1973-1978, and at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP) from 1978 to the present. Along the way, he was lucky enough to win the UWSP Excellence in Teaching Awards ...Read Full