> Fair question. I would say:
>
> - Start by admitting this is apples vs. oranges. There will
> not be one phony number that psuedo-answers the question. This is
> more professional but also brings us closer to a larger social truth:
> that we are comparing different lifestyles that might offer pluses and
> minuses. People should have wider choices than they might think.
As a consumer, not a producer, of what professional economists produce, I sympathize with this comment. I appreciate the attempt by economists to pin numbers on absolutely everything (after all, nothing ventured, nothing gained), but sometimes you have to admit failure.
I think the only way to compare lifestyles of different countries is for people to spend some time living in each country and report their personal assessments of how it felt to them to live in each country. And for this to be done by a number of people for each pair of countries, living in different class environments, regions of the countries, men/women, young/old, gay/straight, various races, etc. Useless for the purpose of compiling economic statistics, but very informative to us human beings.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax