Many can still remember the remark made by our prime minister on the goods and services tax (GST) saving the economy, which was echoed by many other Barisan Nasional members. We were told that without the GST, the Malaysian economy would collapse.

Recently, members from the BN even seem to be proud of the GDP growth that Malaysia achieved.

But is our economy really doing that well?

It is in the interest of BN to keep assuring the people that our economy is improving and doing fine. We were told that the gross domestic product (GDP) of Malaysia for the period of April to June 2017 witnessed strong growth of 5.8 percent.

The growth had of course been added to BN’s basket of defence, amid one of the largest global financial scandals that has been haunting them for a while. That scandal could possibly lead to their defeat in the coming general election – something that has never happened to the 60-year-old ruling coalition.

But just how meaningful or relevant is the 5.8 percent GDP growth to the ordinary Malaysians on the street? Anyone with knowledge of economics will be able to tell that GDP is never a comprehensive measure.

It doesn’t measure happiness, distribution of wealth, living standards, efficiency in resource management, productivity, or technological advancement. The way GDP was computed is also sometimes questionable, with regards to the denomination used, or the segmental differences it doesn’t account for.

A good analogy which is widely applied to explain the inadequacy of GDP as a measurement of well-being is the “car accident.” Imagine two cars involved in an accident, which results in both being totalled. Car insurance, healthcare insurance, out-of-pocket expenses, public funds to repair damaged facilities, possible lawsuits, administrative costs in processing all of the above – these all create GDP, possibly in the region of hundreds of thousands in this particular example.

But does this increment in GDP reflect anything about our well-being?

To put that into context, we must ask more fundamental questions: did our salary increase to at least overcome the price hike due to GST? Did the ringgit improve? Was our purchasing power increased? Was the issue of rising cost of living addressed? Did the petrol price stabilise? Are graduates getting employed now?

The Economic Planning Unit in its “Malaysian Economy in Figures 2017” report states that the unemployment rate in Malaysia has increased from 2.9 to 3.4 percent from 2014 to 2016, and it is expected to further increase to somewhere between 3.6 to 3.8 percent in 2017.

Notably, the unemployment rate among youths in Malaysia has stayed stagnant at above 10 percent for few years now.

One direct way to measure the wealth of the people is to look at purchasing power. While the growth for mean household income has been decent for the past nine years (from RM3,686 in 2007 to RM6,958 in 2016, according to Department of Statistics Malaysia), general Malaysians just don’t see their purchasing power improving.

The reasons for this includes the persistent increase in property prices, high housing debt to GDP ratio (88.3 percent in 2016), the weakened ringgit, as well as an increase in commodity prices.

Therefore, we cannot simply rely solely on GDP growth to assess if our lives or the economy have improved.

In addition, to look at the well-being of Malaysian society as a whole, it will be meaningless if we only look at the quantitative arguments but not the qualitative ones.

In the presence of a responsible governing body and sustainable public policies, being in the higher wealth bracket of society could mean the ability and capability to own, say, a bigger house with swimming pool, a sports car, diamonds, and all sorts of luxuries that do not reduce our right to decent public goods.

In Malaysia, being wealthy makes a vast difference. It means being able to obtain desirable education, access to satisfactory healthcare, and even whether your drinking water is filtered.

These are things that seem to only belong to Malaysians who have means. But these are supposed to be the fundamental responsibilities of the government.

To summarise, we have been made poorer both quantitatively and qualitatively. Due to the inefficient management of resources in our economy, even the rich in Malaysia are being made poorer.