Well, the debate on whether gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is the measure of economic well-being is not new. This has been going on for some time, and some institutions, like the Centre for Bhutan Studies, came up with other alternative measures of well-being, like the happiness index.
Now, even France is getting in on the forefront. From the Economist website:
"Among those convinced that official statisticians should join in is Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. On September 14th a commission he appointed last year, comprising 25 prominent social scientists, five with Nobel prices in economics, presented its findings. Joseph Stiglitz, the group's chairman and one of the laureates, said the 292-page report was a call to abadon 'GDP fetishism'."
I think the effort is noble. I support looking for other measurements of well-being. But to abandon one of the pillars of Keynesian economics because of the notion that "Americans may be well fed yet are fed up" or that "an Indian may be desperately poor and yet say he is happy" may miss the whole point. The Indian is happy because he is satisfied with what little he has left. But in the first place, he has little because he can't afford anything else. And he can't afford is because he may not have a job, or at least he has a job that earns him only a little. This last fact can be captured by GDP per capita. If the Indian has as much access to many things as the average American does, it's not impossible to see that the Indian can also be well fed but is fed up.
GDP is not just about production. One of the basic things being taught in macroeconomics is that it's a circular flow. Whatever is produced is what is earned. It may sound simplistic, but indeed if less is produced, then less is expected of what is earned. As a result, it is least likely that an average person from a low GDP country (a.k.a., the Indian) can purchase the things that the average person from a high GDP country (a.k.a., the American) can buy.
So it seems like these new measures are trying to compare apples and oranges. You just can't compare the two, unless you take into account the differences in the environment facing the two. The funny thing is we accept the fact that we are now living in a world where everything is becoming more globalized, so how is it that we forget that we should not try to isolate the things that can only be bought in America from the things that can only be bought in India and try to say that the Indian is more happy compared to the American.
So before they replace GDP with these new measures of economic well-being, maybe finding measurements based on subjective interpretations may not be the right way to go. They may be good complimentary measures, but definitely not substitutes.