March 11, 2008
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
A THREE DECADE DECLINE
The author of this article talks about the misleading picture provided by the Gross Domestic Product. The GDP is intended to provide a measure of economic growth. The GDP includes bad things as well as good things, as long as the bad things contribute somehow to economic growth. A new measure called the Gross Progress Indicator has been proposed. Using the GPI, most of us have seen a declining standard of living since 1975. This article by Robert Constanza is at www.latimes.com:
GDP measures the total market value of all goods and services produced in a country in a given period. But it includes only those goods and services traded for money. It also adds everything together, without discerning desirable, well-being-enhancing economic activity from undesirable, well-being-reducing activity. An oil spill, for example, increases GDP because someone has to clean it up, but it obviously detracts from well-being.
More crime, more sickness, more war, more pollution, more fires, storms and pestilence are all potentially positives for the GDP because they can spur an increase in economic activity.GDP also ignores activity that may enhance well-being but is outside the market.
The unpaid work of parents caring for their children at home doesn't show up in GDP, but if they decide to work outside the home and pay for child care, GDP suddenly increases. And even though $1 in income means a lot more to the poor than to the rich, GDP takes no account of income distribution.In short, GDP was never intended to be a measure of citizens' welfare -- and it functions poorly as such. Yet it is used as a surrogate appraisal of national well-being in far too many circumstances.
THE ABJECT FAILURE OF TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS
Pass by the boarded up windows of so many foreclosed houses and you can see the American Dream is going away. Pass by the corner gas station and see the breathtaking increase in fuel prices and you sense the Dream is gone. Try to find a decent job that pays livable wages and has benefits and confront the absence of the Dream. When the elites got their way with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 they got even more greedy than they had been before. They have been busily squeezing the middle and working class, suppressing unions, outsourcing jobs, getting handsome tax breaks for themselves, ignoring the country's infrastructure, letting the educational system fall into ruins, and waging immoral wars to control natural resources they want. This is the result. This column by Bob Herbert is at www.rackjite.com:
Maybe now we can stop listening to the geniuses who insisted that the way to nirvana was to ignore the broad national interest while catering to the desires of those who were already the wealthiest among us.
We have always gotten a distorted picture of how well Americans were doing from politicians and the media. The U.S. has a population of 300 million.Thirty-seven million, many of them children, live in poverty. Close to 60 million are just one notch above the official poverty line. These near-poor Americans live in households with annual incomes that range from $20,000 to $40,000 for a family of four. It is disgraceful that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, nearly a third of the people are poor or near-poor.
