Chavez Wants to Redo the 'Rithmetic

• Report this Comment On November 20, 2009, at 4:30 PM, dargus wrote:

  It means he's trying to make a negative report sound positive in an effort to hold power. This is nothing new from Mr. Chavez.

• Report this Comment On November 20, 2009, at 4:34 PM, Joelshann wrote:

  I applaud Chavez—at least he is honest about where he is. Meanwhile, the US counts sustained jobs (and those that received a raise) as “created jobs” (to justify stimulus money), and there hasn’t been a month of BLS reporting that wasn’t redacted months later. At least we’ll start getting some inside looks at the Fed, with the new audit bill that was passed. I’m afraid things will look more like Venezuela than like the US of 1905.

• Report this Comment On November 21, 2009, at 11:14 PM, zloj wrote:

  First figure out whether your own GDP is really 14 trillion as claimed or maybe you should throw out imputed rents and other such crap. After you recalculate your own number, feel free to criticize Venezuelan accounting shenanigans.

• Report this Comment On November 22, 2009, at 1:15 PM, lucas1985 wrote:

  What a poor article. According to the WSJ:

  "In Venezuela, he said, a citizen who goes to a medical center for a visit can get free service that never shows up as economic activity because money doesn’t change hands."

  In other words, he wants to incorporate non-monetary flows into the GDP calculation. Obviously, changing the way GDP is calculated will cause that comparatives between countries will be meaningless. That said, there's a growing interest [1, 2] in making GDP reflect more than monetary flows in a economy.

  "And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans." - Robert F. Kennedy [3]

  1- http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/06/0082042

  2- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/business/global/15gdp.html...

  3- http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Refe...

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