I fully agree. Another depressing aspect of this concentration in the media and most political discussion on numbers (like GDP) that ignore the condition of the poor has been the way welfare reform has been discussed. We have all kinds of people cheering the reduction in welfare rolls, declaring the program thus to be a "success." That there has been very little real improvement in the quality of the lives of those who have been removed to go to low-paying dead-end jobs and that the poverty rate has barely budged despite all the super GDP growth the US economy has experienced only very rarely gets mentioned. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Friday, September 03, 1999 2:33 PM Subject: RE: GDP is unscientific and unfair for poor people.
>Max Sawicky wrote:
>
>>I'd be surprised to find an introductory text which
>>does not make clear the distinction between GDP and
>>well-being, or between GDP and the condition of the
>>poor. The use of GDP in political debate as a welfare
>>indicator is another matter, but this thread is getting
>>ridiculous.
>
>There's no question though that the media report and people in
>politics talk about big macro indicators like GDP and class-biased
>indicators like the stock market and even labor costs. I'm surprised
>at the degree to which wage growth is spun as a threat; formerly an
>obsession of the bond market, it's now A1 news. In the U.S., poverty
>and median income and maybe income distribution get one story a year,
>when the income & poverty reports are released in late September.
>World figures get their one annual story when the Human Development
>Report is released. You can hardly turn on a TV news show without
>seeing a Wall Street analyst holding forth about something.
>
>Doug
>
>