Posted on 08/31/2018 7:44:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“What’s in a name?” asked Shakespeare. But hey, I’m an economist, so let me ask a somewhat different question: What’s in a number?
Quite a lot, suggest Senators Chuck Schumer and Martin Heinrich. This week they introduced a bill that would direct the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which produces estimates of gross domestic product, to produce estimates telling us who benefits from growth — for example, how much is going to the middle class.
This is a really good idea.
Now, I’m not one of those people who think G.D.P. is a terribly flawed or useless statistic. It’s a number we need for many purposes. But on its own it isn’t an adequate measure of economic success.
There are a number of reasons this is true, but one key issue is that it tells you only what’s happening to average income, which isn’t always relevant to how most people live. If Jeff Bezos walks into a bar, the average wealth of the bar’s patrons suddenly shoots up to several billion dollars — but none of the non-Bezos drinkers have gotten any richer.
There was a time when asking who benefits from economic growth didn’t seem urgent, because income was rising steadily for just about everyone. Since the 1970s, however, the link between overall growth and individual incomes seems to have been broken for many Americans. On one side, wages have stagnated for many; adjusted for inflation, the median male worker earns less now than he did in 1979. On the other side, some have seen their incomes grow much faster than the income of the nation as a whole. Thus C.E.O.s at the largest companies now make 270 times as much as the average worker, up from 27 times as much in 1980.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A similar disconnect between overall growth and individual experience seems to lie behind the public’s lack of enthusiasm for the current state of the economy and its disdain for the 2017 tax cut. G.D.P. numbers have been good in recent quarters, but much of the growth has gone to soaring corporate profits, while median real wages have gone nowhere.
THEN RECOMMENDS THIS INSTEAD:
We need “distributional national accounts” that track how growth is allocated among different segments of the population.
Didn’t this guy predict a total collapse of the economy under Trump?
So I wonder why he wasn’t offering this wisdom to Obama? Probably because he knew Obama likely had his mother and his grandparents writing his teacher notes to excuse him from doing his homework and other ordinary school activities that were below the young Messiah’s level.
Why wasn’t this necessary during the Obama administration, when the economy was growing at 1% annually?
Paul your IYI...intelligent yet idiot..
Maybe just an idiot
Solution: Make up new statistics and game them to tell a sad story.
RE: Didn’t this guy predict a total collapse of the economy under Trump?
When confronted with this, his response was — GIVE IT TIME.
Every week
Over 4% GDP; record low unemployment; mines reopening; factories reopening; factories being moved to the US
But we need to know the rest. Ok Paul!
Because in the World of Krugman trickle down poverty is acceptable but trickle down wealth never happens
Between 2008 and 2016 the media did a good job explaining how bad news was really good news. I wondered “but is good news ever bad news?” Thankfully since Nov 2016 they’ve been doing a fantastic job explaining how really good news is actually terrible scary news.
“Didn’t this guy predict a total collapse of the economy under Trump?”
Yeh..he’s trying real hard to garner - The Duranty / Blair Award for this year.....
When they lose, they change the standard.
Trump won the electoral vote which is the established standard. But since Hillary won the popular vote, we should go by the popular vote count.
They get you coming and going.
RE: What ever university gave this asshat a degree in economics should be shut down!!!
.... And what to make of the Nobel Committee? He won a Nobel Prize in Economics.
Left always looking to create numbers that hide their abject stupidity. Like they need another excuse to divide the people.
Someone needs to search Krugmans’ archives and see how many times he praised Obamas’ and Clintons’ GDP numbers.
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