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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Broken_Clock who wrote (112125)	3/12/2008 1:12:26 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Respond to of 132070

BC, I think there's a lot of truth to that article. There are a lot of things that aren't measured by GDP or on the income statements of companies. The problem is that the values of individuals vary, are highly subjective, and can even change over time. So if someone tries to incorporate some of those things into a numeric measurement, they almost can't get them right and are more likely to simply use their own values.

To: Broken_Clock who wrote (112125)	3/13/2008 9:05:19 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 132070

We may be entering in to a recession, or we may not be. If we are, recessions aren't exactly unusual. We've gone through them before, we'll go through them again. Its not a sign that society is getting poorer in a durable way, or even that it has stopped getting wealthier. GDP doesn't represent all aspects of well being. But the one's that it does represent are still things that are increasing (at least as a long run trend, even if we are entering in to a recession) and things that we want to increase. The formula for calculating GPI, for instance, starts with personal consumption expenditures, a major component of GDP, but makes several crucial adjustments. First, it accounts for income distribution. That makes it problematic in my opinion. Even if we could shift wealth and income around without having a net negative effect on wealth and income, shifting it from the rich to the poor would only keep us equally wealthy on the whole, not wealthier. And to the extent that the concern is how well the median person, or the poorest 20%, or even the poorest 1% do, then that should be what you measure, not inequality. If the real wealth of the top 20% increases by 50%, and the middle 80% increases by 5%, and the bottom 20% by 1%, then things have gotten better not worse. It then adds positive contributions that GDP ignores, such as the value of household and volunteer work. That's probably a good factor to consider, although not the easiest one to quantify. Finally, it subtracts things that are well-being-reducing, such as the loss of leisure time and the costs of crime, commuting and pollution. Loss of leisure time, probably shouldn't be counted. For one thing leisure time has increased not decreased, over the years. If it had decreased, that to a large degree means people would be choosing to spend their time working (perhaps doing the household and volunteer work that GPI counts). BTW those measures are mostly getting better. Well crime has had a blip up but the trend has been down for many years. Leisure time has increased (as has volunteer work but probably not individual work around the house, as people are more likely to hire someone to do the work than in the past, either because they don't know how, or because they would prefer the leisure time). Pollution has generally been going down (at least in the developed countries). About the only thing clearly getting worse is traffic. Once Americans’ well-being becomes the basis for measuring our success Its one complex and at least slightly subjective measure of our well-being. I don't mind it also being considered, but it shouldn't replace all other factors, and it probably needs to be adjusted a bit before it gets any serious consideration. We should tax “bads” (carbon emissions, depletion of natural resources) rather than “goods” (labor, savings, investment). A decent argument could be made that if your going to have the tax you might as well tax bad things. OTOH if taken too far it becomes tax as a means to control. Also opinions about bad things can change over time. And if you tax certain bad things, and manage to discourage them you decrease your tax base. the U.S. is mired in a 33-year-old quality-of-life recession Nonsense.