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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (10024)	10/1/2009 4:05:01 PM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

median household income in 2008 fell That's not the same as standard of living. That's also a short trendline. How level something is is a function of the length of the level.

To: Road Walker who wrote (10024)	10/13/2009 2:35:14 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

But there has long been discussion of the metric's alleged deficiencies; namely, that it does not take into account factors such as disparity in the distribution of wealth, depletion of natural resources, underground economies, and the quality of goods and services. Disparity is simply irrelevant to the idea of what's being measured, not just to the specific technical ways the measurement is done, but to the general idea behind the measurement. The size of the economy and the relative levels of wealth and income of its members are two entirely different issues. Depletion of natural resources is a little more relevant, but still reasonably not included in a measurement of production. Also the economic value of natural resources goes up over time as we learn to use them more efficiently, do new things with them, and use new types of resources that previously been worth little or nothing. In real dollar terms, the stock of natural resources is more valuable each century and almost every decade, and the majority of years, than the one before. Underground economies are highly relevant, but hard to measure. They would tend to make GDP higher if included. The quality of goods and services is indirectly, at least partially, included in the measurement. If people pay more for higher quality goods then the measured GDP is higher. Also some of the improvement in the quality of goods over time gets included in terms of a reduction in measurement of inflation that reduces the figure for GDP and GDP changes. As a result, the massive subprime-related losses that financial institutions booked in 2008 wiped out not only the profits from 2007 but also those from the preceding five years. "They were not really profits, but we recorded them as fantastic years," asserted Stiglitz. You could net them out, but if your going to reduce the measured profit in this area then the losses shouldn't be reported as there gross total either, but rather offset by the previously stated profits. And if the overshoot to the high end was "fake", then any overshoot to the low end would also have to be so treated. (Which isn't necessarily a significant factor now, and in any case isn't something we can measure perfectly ever, or at all except in hindsight) That means other countries are spending less and getting better results The 2nd part of the assertion is questionable. median household income in 2008 fell I agree with Lane's response - "That's not the same as standard of living. That's also a short trendline." I'd add that for the very short trend line standard of living has gone down, it generally does that in a recession, but over a longer period its gone up.