After SVG’s cost-of-living task force: what if progress counted friction removed?

Editor: Searchlight’s coverage of St Vincent and the Grenadines’ National Cost-of-Living Task Force stood out to me because the work streams themselves go beyond one price number: energy security, food security and supply-chain resilience. That is very close to a measurement question my husband Kimroy and I have been developing from our own family systems work.

We call it Abundance Theory. The idea is that national progress may be richer than GDP alone shows when food-producing capacity, resilient water and energy, useful local skill, secure basic provision and everyday friction removed from family life are counted as wealth too. We are not telling SVG what its answer should be. The interesting story, to us, is whether a local journalist can stress-test the framework against the cost-of-living pressures already being debated there.

The framework has recently drawn coverage in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian and in Puerto Rico business media. Our explainer is here:

Kimroy and I have learned that family economics is brutally good at exposing theory: the children do not accept GDP as a substitute for dinner.

Sherika Trott Bailey, writing alongside Kimroy Bailey