Background information: Gross domestic product (GDP) is usually considered shorthand for material well-being as a measurement of the value-added in an economy. Even, some other people use GDP as a benchmark of welfare and happiness. Here comes a question: How to measure prosperity and quality of life in the 21 st -century society?
Direction: Write a 300-word composition about your view on the background information. You should write down a title by yourself.
Your composition is to include 3 paragraphs:
1. In the first paragraph, state your main idea;
2. In the second paragraph, support your main idea with specific examples and necessary reasoning;
3. In the last paragraph, bring your composition to a natural conclusion.
GDP Is Not the Only Measurement of Prosperity and Happiness
Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which has been used to gauge the material well-being for years, seems to lose its dominant place and gradually shows its shortage in the 21st-century society. Therefore, it cannot be the only measurement to decide a country’s prosperity or a person’s quality of life.
A country’s prosperity is not solely dependent on GDP, and it may involve many other factors. For example, compared with a medieval state which is rich enough, a 21st-century country may be better even if it has a smaller number of the GDP. In the medieval state, there is no modern technology, and people have to travel for days to arrive at a far place, they don’t have phones or microblog to idle their free time, and they have to do all the trivial work by hand that is done by machine in today’s society. However, the 21st-century society is bred in such an environment. In the medieval time, the education may be underdeveloped with many science subjects being left behind, while a modern society pay much attention to it, and the whole educational level of the society is higher, which is also a gauge of a country’s prosperity. As to people’s happiness, GDP plays a less important role than it used to be.With the country’s development in many ways, people begin to improve their quality of life by fully utilizing the development rather than just gathering money to raise the GDP number. For instance, a 21st-century citizen may spend more money on his health care, personal development and entertainment. Thus the money he has will obviously decrease, but does his life quality decrease too? I’m afraid not. In addition, the feeling of happiness is rather subjective which is related to material wealth but definitely not depends on it. So it is difficult to say a man of wealth is happy or a poor one is not.
It cannot be denied that GDP is a way to measure a country’s wealth and people’s wealth, but from the above discussions, I firmly believe that GDP is not the only way to gauge prosperity or happiness because many factors need to be taken into consideration.
本文探讨的主题是如何衡量21世纪的繁荣和生活质量。 作者将题目定为GDP不是衡量繁荣和幸福的唯一标准。 全文共三段： 第一段提出主要论点， 即在21世纪的社会中GDP不再是衡量国家繁荣和人民生活水平的唯一尺度。 第二段围绕国家的繁荣发展和个人幸福展开， 作者将中世纪的富裕国家与现代化国家进行对比， 指出后者在科技、 教育方面的优势也是衡量国家繁荣的指标。 此外， 国家的发展和个人的主观感受都会影响一个人的幸福感， 因此不能仅用GDP来衡量一个人的幸福。 最后一段重申论点， 需要考虑多重因素， 不能仅靠GDP衡量繁荣和幸福。