Diluting meaningful data, EU style

The start of a not-good trend:
EU mulls indicators to measure wellbeing ‘beyond GDP’

The European Commission has published a roadmap for developing new environmental and social indicators to measure the real prosperity and wellbeing of nations beyond traditional GDP. The reflections could affect the strategic goals of the post-2010 Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs.

GDP growth is the main indicator for measuring the effectiveness of recovery plans launched last year to restore economic growth.

However, “there is a clear case for complementing GDP with statistics covering the other economic, social and environmental issues on which people’s well-being critically depends,” according to a Commission communicationexternal entitled ‘GDP and beyond – Measuring progress in a changing world’, adopted on 20 August.

Sarko, as it turns out, is way ahead of the EU crowd on that one: France to count happiness in GDP

Happiness, long holidays and a sense of well-being may not be everyone’s yardstick for economic performance, but Nicolas Sarkozy believes they should be embraced by the world in a national accounting overhaul.

If Sarko wants to send me on an all-expenses-paid three-month long tango vacation in Buenos Aires he would probably improve France’s GDP by at least two points, easily. He is certainly doing his part by contributing $300/session with his perineal trainer.

Jonah Goldberg makes a sarcastic comment,

Will the market for French bonds rally every time the price of brie drops or France wins a soccer game?

But, as I said at the start of this post, this is not a good trend. Joe at ¡No Pasarán! explains why:

So the way to evade the ineffectual nature of borrowing for capital injection on this scale is basically to lie about it. In effect, having a petit cannon to take the edge off of the hangover, remorse, and herpetic itch that you woke up with.
…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, real people see the GDP to mean the GDP, from which accurate impressions of social progress, particulary poverty, can be clearly and realistically understood, not hidden in a miasma of predetermined inferences.

This, as we’ve seen all too often before in European history, is an attempt to control the interpretation of reality based on what the public is permitted to learn, and limited from knowing. If they really think that they’re offering up some “brand new age of freedom” world view, the destruction of instruments like those is the way to go, not recycling the contemporary equivalent of “announcing another successful 5 year plan”. I wonder if they really realize that they appear to be living in a philosophical near-past that they should otherwise take heed of, one characterized by the chewing-up of a frail population in the name of improving their lives. The view itself is a regurgitation lebensraum delusion, handed off to a new generation, a new “human mass”, when in reality the mass needed to be permitted to release its’ cogs into enabled individuals who can act autonomously.

The failure of their history is to see people as “the people” which could be handled and controlled as a unit, a tool, and an inconvenience. It’s also those that buy into it who have such a hard time grasping what it is Americans mean by their freedoms. No matter how often the people of rump Europa get donkey punched by dictat and history, they never seem to grasp even the outline of this idea.

Then, the “ideal man” was stupid and pliant. For whatever collection of popularly shared reasons for which the evasion is supposed to be a cure, (normally the reason used is the ‘climate change’ hostage-taking brand of environmental issues), the forgetful children of the meek who inherited the continent are trying it again.

Indeed.

Email me about that Buenos Aires holiday, Sarko.