I will reply to this one first:
4/29/96, Greg <gehrig@banyan.doc.gov> wrote:
>In short, while neither measure is perfect, I guess I am a
>conservative in the sense that I prefer the evils of the old GDP per
>capita system (with caveats for income dispersion & others) to the
>unknown evils of some of the more "newfangled" systems of
>measurement.
I think this is an excellent example of where academic
methodology
serves to obscure truth more than it helps elucidate understanding.
Living
standards and welfare are OBVIOUSLY deteriorating in many
first-world
countries. There's higher unemployment, more homelessness, more
hours-worked necessary for bare survival, desperation among
college
graduates, astronomical health-care costs, etc. etc. Indices which
fail to
reflect reality should be discarded or refined, not defended. True
science
is grounded in unbiased observation, not rigid methodologies.
-rkm
_____________End of message
If you recall, my original posting pointed out some contradictions in
your "doublespeak" article. In it you asserted that the first world
was in decline because it was competing with the third world, but
that, and I quote:
"globalization" leads to a _greater_ prosperity disparity between the
"developed" and "developing" nations, as measured by the _disposable
income_ and living standards of the global populations.
End Quote.
Now, you are telling me that what you are defining "wealth" the
same as you would "standard of living". Fine. However, I am
struck by the increasing irony of debating with the author -- who
seems to avoid debate by constantly redefining the words he uses --
of a paper ostensibly on the subject of the corruption of language.
Some other musings on this post:
>. Indices which fail to
>reflect reality should be discarded or refined, not defended.
I see. So when the data does not fit the theory, the data must be
either discarded or changed to fit the theory, hmm?
> True science is grounded in unbiased observation, not rigid
>methodologies.
Let me tell you a little science story I learned in school. It is a true
story, but I do not remember the name of the British Scientist who
conducted it. He was a man of integrity and was a highly prestigous
scientist, and a member of the royal society.
Once upon a time there was a great, respected scientist, who truly
attempted --as we know from his personal journals -- to view the
world from an unbiased perspective. This particular scientist was an
anthropologist, interested in studying the diffences which arise within
the human race. One of the elements he studied was brain size. It so
happened that this scientist worked at the British Museum and had a
large collection of Human skulls to work with. He hit apon a method
of measuring brain size -- he would simply pour sawdust into the hole
(formed by the spinal cord at the base of the skull) until it was full.
Then he would pour out the skull into a beaker, and have an exact
measure of the volume of the brain which once rode inside the skull.
This he did with many different skulls, and after exhaustive
experimentation, published his result: Blacks were substantially
less intelligent than whites because they had, on average, smaller
brains!
Remember that this scientist was considered the world expert in his
field, and was widely respected for his integrity. The time was the
late 19th century. And he was wrong, but he did not know it. Can
you guess how?
Later, the same experiments were done on the same skulls using lead
shot instead of sawdust. It was found that the skulls were
indistinguashable, on average, in terms of their brain size. One can
imagine the white scientist picking up a smaller caucasian skull,
frowning, and tamping just a bit more sawdust into it, or filling a
black skull not quite up to the rim with sawdust. The moral of the
story? As they teach in philosophy of science classes, NO
OBSERVER IS UNBIASED. History is full of wrong answers arrived at
when the right ones were attainable because no one wanted ugly facts
to ruin a beautiful theory. Rigid Methodologies are the only known
way to help avoid researcher bias. This is especially true in the
social sciences, but it is present even in the "hard" sciences. Even
Albert Einstein, near the end of his life, refused to accept quantum
theory on the grounds that "God does not play dice with the universe".
>From what I remember, (and no one has yet given the reference) the
GPI was put out a small political group with a definite agenda. You
can not go about and define all data which disagrees with your theory
as "flawed" and that which agrees as "enlightened". As I said
before, all sources that I know show increased standards of living.
The Statistical Abstract, the UN, and just about any organization that
collects international data show things like: ownership of appliances,
production and consumption of food, motor vehicle registrations,
average wages per man hour in manufacturing among production
workers, time spent to earn selected food items, per capita
consumption of meat and poultry items, and so on. Almost all of these
measures support the conclusion that global living standards are going
up, and have the advantage of not being subject to researcher bias.
A more up to date example of bias affecting analysis is the current
"stagnant wage" debate here in the US. It is true that real cash
wages among manufacturing workers remain stagnant, BUT what is
not mentioned is that, when non-cash benefits (pension, health,
in-kind compensation) are factored in, total compensation (wages +
benefits) has continued to increase. Similarly, many studies which
perport to show declining wealth for the bottom 10 percent of the US
economy only report wage income. What more rigorous analyses
show is that when benefits from the state (welfare, food stamps,
afdc, etc.) are brought in, real income is rising. Why are these
oversights allowed to occur? The answer is that stagnant wages
make for a better story, and helps more government agencies, than
one based on slow but steady total compensation for workers.
Anxiety in the first world is OBVIOUSLY increasing, but whether
living standards are depends entirely where you sit.
Another observation:
Every person equates the economic interests of the Nation with that
of his own, and vice versa.
I have talked to people in Texas, after the fall in oil prices wiped out
the local economy, who were demanding that the government heavily
tax imports of oil -- because it would help the economy of texas.
Never mind what that would do to other parts of the economy - in
fact, I don't think it ever occured to them that it would result in
layoffs for people in detroit, or higher prices for"the people",
--"those folks did alright in the past, and besides, I don't know them,
so they aren't really people" (remember the inverse-square law)
This law applies to the desperate college graduates as equally as it
does to anyone else.
-Greg