>But do allow me to indulge a slight digression on the 'nothing new here' >theme. In October of last year, the Atlantic Monthly carried a cover story >criticizing the use of the Gross Domestic Product as a surrogate measure of >national prosperity. Conventional economists arose with such a uniform >chorus of 'nothing new here' that it would have been easy to imagine they >were all activated by a single master switch. Of course there was 'nothing >new here', reasoned critiques of GDP have been advanced -- and dutifully >ignored -- for decades. I know this is actually off the subject of the thread to date, but just for the record, and for those of you who didn't see this article, it's excellent material for intro and intermediate macro classes. "If GDP is UP Why is America Down?" Halstead, Cobb, and Rowe, the authors of the Genuine Progress Indicator, Redefining Progress' "corrected" measure of economic welfare. Blair Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
