> economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality
Which is funny, because as economist, half of the material is "these metric don't matter, if there's no benefit for the population, but you can't ignore them either". It can be summarized as something like "economic indicators are not perfect measures of general well-being, but you need the indicators to look good to be able to distribute well-being".
The thing is, that the public doesn't get that _nuance_. Good economist know that a growing GPD doesn't mean that everyone is feeling good, but also knows that a shrinking one means that most will fell bad.
So perhaps economists need to work on this "comm" issue. At least the ones involved in government stats. "It's not their job" only if they actively make it not their job.
I ran into this with NASA. A NASA "scientist" insisted it was proper for them and their colleagues to ignore both valid and crackpot suggestions or questions on the rationale that "crackpots are gonna crackpot and they have limited time so the proper response was to just ignore everyone and everything except their (collectively) narrow research projects." - Which are each extremely specific and grounded in massive piles of internal assumptions as to what matters. There was zero interest in the idea that they were paid by the public and might want to improve their image now and then.
Which is funny, because as economist, half of the material is "these metric don't matter, if there's no benefit for the population, but you can't ignore them either". It can be summarized as something like "economic indicators are not perfect measures of general well-being, but you need the indicators to look good to be able to distribute well-being".
The thing is, that the public doesn't get that _nuance_. Good economist know that a growing GPD doesn't mean that everyone is feeling good, but also knows that a shrinking one means that most will fell bad.