This year, New Zealand became the first nation to formally drop gross domestic product (GDP) as its main measure of economic success. The government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the budget would aim not at maximizing GDP but instead at maximizing well-being.

Apart from schools, hospitals and roads, whose budgets would be allocated in the normal way, resources would be distributed according to their impact on five government priorities: mental health, child well-being, the inequalities of indigenous people, building a nation adapted to the digital age and fashioning a low-emission economy.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the whole world has been locked into the idea that one has to grow–either to catch up or to stay ahead or simply to keep in motion the mechanisms of capitalism that depend on endless expansion.

Even those people who accept that climate change is an existential threat find themselves pulled in contradictory directions. On one level, they strive to be richer,..

For almost six months, the unrest in Hong Kong has followed a rhythm. On weekends, the Chinese-ruled enclave would convulse with pro-democracy protests. During the workweek, the acrid haze of tear gas would clear and life moved on, though the revolutionary graffiti haranguing the Communist Party of China lingered.

But in November, the struggle took a sudden and dangerous new turn. After a student demonstrator died on Nov. 8 of complications from a fall during a protest, the weekly schedule surrendered to daily urban warfare. The demonstrators say normality cannot be restored. “We can’t just protest on the weekends anymore,” says Ezoe, a 20-year-old medical student. “If we are going to win this fight, people need to stop their jobs. The government needs to see the economy will hurt.”

The latest escalation eventually centered on the city’s universities, where students like Ezoe holed up to resist arrest. That places of learning have become battlegrounds strikes at the symbolic heart of..

(BEIJING) — China on Thursday demanded President Donald Trump veto legislation aimed at supporting human rights in Hong Kong and renewed a threat to take “strong countermeasures” if the bills become law.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act undermined both China’s interests and those of the U.S. in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.

“We urge the U.S. to grasp the situation, stop its wrongdoing before it’s too late, prevent this act from becoming law (and) immediately stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs,” Geng said at a daily news briefing.

“If the U.S. continues to make the wrong moves, China will be taking strong countermeasures for sure,” Geng said.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi joined in the criticism, telling visiting former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen that the legislation constituted an act of interference in China’s internal affairs and ignored violent acts committed by protesters.

“This bi..