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SEQUENCE:18806967
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DESCRIPTION:\n\nFilm evenings begin with potluck refreshments & social hour at  6:30 
 pm,\nfollowed by the film at  7:30 pm, followed by a discussion after the 
 film.\n\nWHO'S COUNTING?\nby Terre Nash\n\nMarilyn Waring is the author of 
 a book on women in the world economy entitled:  “If Women Counted.”  To 
 this day it offers a persuasive and vivid argument against endless economic 
 growth.  At age 22 Marilyn became the youngest member of the New Zealand 
 Parliament.  She chaired the prestigious Public Expenditures Committee and 
 became familiar with the Gross Domestic Product system and decided to 
 disclose its pathologies in a film.  The film traces her quest to explore 
 how the fate of women and of the earth are irrevocably tied up with the 
 deadly pursuit of economic growth.\n\nGood-humoredly, Marilyn skewers the 
 official view of things:  “As long as the activity passes through the 
 market, it’s good for growth.”  Marilyn and, through her, Director 
 Terre Nash, address the “invisibility of women’s work,” which goes 
 unpaid and is officially “of little or no importance,” referring to 
 postwar rules that the international economic system imposes on all 
 countries through the U.N. System of National Accounts.  We hear 
 Marilyn’s voice in the film:  “Important decisions are made with these 
 GNP figures, decisions which will determine whose needs are met first, 
 decisions on how to spend your tax dollars, decisions on killing the 
 planet, decisions on who will live or die….  This system cannot respond 
 to values it refuses to recognize.  It is the cause of massive poverty, 
 illness, and the death of millions of women and children, and it is 
 encouraging environmental disaster.  This is an economic system that can 
 eventually kill us all.”  They say that growth will solve the financial 
 crisis.  GDP was invented by J.M. Keynes for Britain during WWII to pay for 
 the war.  Now it is a mandatory accounting formula used by all nations.  
 GDP counts only cash transactions, giving no value to peace and the 
 environment.  This means there is no value to peace, to the preservation of 
 the environment, and no value to unpaid work.  The GDP system leaves out 
 half the population of the planet and the planet itself.\n\nMarilyn Waring 
 is a vocal critic of the standard cost-benefit analysis of labor and 
 productivity.  Her consideration of unpaid female labor throughout the 
 world, which is officially discounted as being “nonproductive” in as 
 much as it generates no capital gain, no “growth” to the economy.  
 Waring’s argument, however, is holistic rather than gender-partisan, 
 surveying a wide range of matters, including the “productivity” that 
 wars generate, through the prism of the dismissal of the value of women’s 
 work at home.  This official view, she and Director Terre Nash contend, is 
 nuts.  Who’s Counting?  The question holds a double meaning, referring to 
 who fixes value, according to what set of priorities, and to who and what 
 in this scheme is being “counted” as having value or not.  Marilyn 
 Waring’s work and intriguing life is described in this eye-opening 
 documentary film.\n\nWheelchair accessible around the corner at  411  28th  
 Street\n\n$5 donations are accepted\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/05/06/18713057.php
SUMMARY:Who's Counting?
LOCATION:Humanist Hall\n390  27th  Street\nuptown Oakland, between Telegraph and 
 Broadway\nhttp://www.HumanistHall.org
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/05/06/18713057.php
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DTEND:20120524T043000Z
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