“The Sad Statistic that Trumps the Others”

"Here is my latest column, some of it will sound familiar to readers of TGS:

One bias in the economic statistics — which never shows up in published revisions — is embedded in the health care sector, where third-party payments, subsidies and care quality are hard to monitor and measure. A result is that a dollar spent on health care does not necessarily mean a true dollar’s worth of value added. The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country, yet without producing measurably superior results. To the extent that some of these expenditures are wasteful, the gross domestic product and productivity numbers overstate economic growth.

Here’s another problem: Expenditures on the military and domestic security have risen since 9/11, but those investments are intended to neutralize external threats. Even if you agree with this spending, it generally doesn’t produce useful goods and services that raise our standard of living.

One of the most commonly cited productivity numbers describes per-hour labor productivity, but this, too, has intrinsic flaws. Labor force participation has been falling for more than a decade, and low-skilled workers are leaving the work force in disproportionate numbers. Taking some lower-paying jobs out of the mix will raise the measure for average productivity, which is hardly the same as increasing the economic gains from a given set of workers or, for that matter, from putting more people to work by making them more productive.

There is more at the link, including points which do not appear in TGS."

at http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/08/the-sad-statistic-that-trumps-the-others.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29