决战1010精英组Economist阅读汇——by nanfeng25899

nanfeng25899UID: 2629871

REBUTTAL

The moderator's rebuttal remarks

Mar 12th 2010 | Oliver Morton

The two sides are clearly agreed on the fact that the private sector will be responsible for actually producing jobs, green or otherwise. What they differ on is the extent to which government should, by means of policies intended to provide environmental benefit, seek to shape the decisions that surround that job creation. In the helpful metaphor introduced by Robert Stavins, those who want to hit two birds with one stone need to show that the birds are close together, and that their stone throwing skills are up to the task. (Demonstrating that there are no nearby glasshouses at risk might also be a help …)

Van Jones makes the undeniable point that within the energy sector there is no question of green jobs policy distorting an otherwise free market; the market starts off hugely influenced, perhaps compromised, by legacy subsidies and other interventions of all sorts. He also points to studies saying that investment in various green technologies and industries produces more employment than investment in those subsidised hydrocarbons, though it is not obviously the case that investment would come at the expense only of fossil-fuel investment. (On this issue of opportunity costs, if either side would care to look a little further at the study of Spanish green jobs by researchers at King Juan Carlos University, it seems to me that many of the commenters would be grateful.)

Mr Jones might give further attention, though, to the implicit message of the existing distorting subsidies, a message brought up by commenter Kenavi: they show how long such incentives can outlive（v.经受住） their useful purpose, if they ever had one, and warn that green job policies may do the same. Both Andy Morriss and Mr Jones agree that jobs created by American ethanol policy are not very green. It seems to me that Mr Jones needs to address the question of how future green jobs interventions （GRE：n.干涉）that prove un-green might be dealt with, in the face of the political truth that the green failures of ethanol policy have not been.

Mr Morriss is inclined to limit his shaping of the market response to offering prizes for certain types of innovation deemed necessary. In the comments MapJim stresses, rightly I think, the need for basic research as a government priority beyond such technological demonstration. But Mr Morriss's belief in innovation and markets alone seems to stretch too far in some respects. To bolster his arguments that governments cannot pick winners, he points to the very different energy economy of the 1870s, and suggests that people today can no more guess at their energy futures than people back then could have guessed at the realities of today.

This seems implausible. Today's scientific understanding of the earth and its resources, and of the nature of the physical world, is genuinely and qualitatively, as well as quantitatively, more advanced than that of the 1870s, when educated analysts were only beginning to get to grips（n. 理解） with the laws of thermodynamics. Forecasters today cannot be sure of future technology costs, but they can be fairly sure that they have thought of them in a way that the people of the 1870s had not thought of mass motorized transport, nuclear power or domestic electricity services. On the scales of cosmology and string theory, physics certainly still has revolutions to offer. When it comes to practical matters of energy generation and supply, surprises as huge as those that followed from the understanding of the atom are surely unlikely. Innovation, including that provided by novel scientific insights garnered（GRE：v.收集） through fresh research, is vital to the improvement and evolution of technologies, and some technologies—including perhaps those behind biofuels—may change a lot.

But the idea that there can be no picking of winners because not all the horses have yet reached the track seems to take historical relativism too far. The next decades of energy and climate policy will be largely about deploying（GRE: v,部署）, sometimes in improved forms, technologies and strategies already reasonably well known. It does not seem a priori unreasonable for governments to make some choices between those options on the basis of externalities not captured by the market.

nanfeng25899UID: 2629871

The proposer's rebuttal remarks

Mar 12th 2010 | Van Jones

In a world of precarious（GRE: a,.不确定的，不安全的） energy supplies, mounting climate concerns and a global race for clean-energy jobs, Andy Morriss suggests that Americans should sit back and leave our energy security solely to the magic of the marketplace.

I share Mr Morriss's preference for market-based solutions, but in this case his prescription is not rooted in the reality of today's distorted and dysfunctional energy markets. He claims that the marketplace is best at pricing energy and picking technologies, but that is simply not so when the market is so heavily tilted in favour of fossil fuels.

Nor do today's energy markets allow us to respond effectively to the critical challenge of our time: global warming. Our energy troubles arise from a whole series of government policy failures and staggering market failures. We simply cannot rely solely on the market to fix our problems without first taking steps to repair our markets.

The markets for new energy sources are being strangled（vt.扼死，勒死；抑制，压制，限制）by government support for old energy sources. For instance, the true costs of burning dirty energy are not properly accounted for. Governments spend billions of dollars subsidising Big Oil companies and other polluters. And power grids were designed to service huge, centralised power plants, not to link multiple points of distributed, intermittent renewable sources of energy

We need deft government action to address these challenges and create the conditions for a multibillion-dollar clean-tech energy boom.

To build support for his position, Mr Morriss raises a series of concerns. Most of them miss the mark. I share in Mr Morriss's critique of corn-based ethanol, for example, but I would reject the implication that we should therefore just accept the status quo and avoid future missteps by never again trying to diversify our energy supply.

Mr Morriss claims that the work of moving to a cleaner economy is hampered by the lack of a universal and timeless definition of the term "green jobs". This is a red herring. In public policy, we continually debate, revisit and reshape what should be included under any important label, whether the term is "American made", "organic food" or "green jobs". In a democracy, these kinds of debates are continuous and any resolution only provisional.

What is important is that, in practice, governments and businesses today, at all levels, are crafting definitions and versions of the term "green jobs", definitions that correspond to their own specific challenges, needs, preferences and opportunities. And they are moving forward, on that basis, to create the jobs of tomorrow.

Mr Morriss claims that "virtually none of the analyses supporting green jobs programs make calculations of net jobs". Not true. Many studies show green investments resulting in a net increase in jobs.

A June 2009 study by the Center for American Progress, for example, looked at the impact of $150 billion in annual green investments and concluded that it would generate about 2.5m jobs. These investments were contrasted with a comparable level of spending on traditional fossil fuels, which would generate roughly 800,000 jobs. The net effect is therefore 1.7m jobs, assuming that every dollar spent on clean energy is redirected from fossil fuels.

Similarly, data culled(v.摘选) from the US Department of Commerce suggest that money invested in efficiency and renewable energy produces roughly four times as many jobs as the same dollar amount invested in producing energy from oil. Clean-energy investments produce roughly three times the number of jobs as investing in coal. There are simply more jobs per dollar and per kilowatt hour in producing clean energy and rebuilding for efficiency than there are in producing dirty energy and wasting energy.

A more diverse energy supply would reduce price volatility（n.动荡不定） and blunt our nation's vulnerability to fossil-fuel price shocks. Fluctuating energy prices can stunt(v.阻碍正常生长) economic growth, costing a country jobs.

Over time, countries with policies that limit carbon emissions and promote clean energy will likely generate more patents in clean energy and more intellectual property, further underscoring the importance of proactive policy to ensure long-term competitiveness.

Mr Morriss jokes that he would give an F grade to a college freshman who authored some green jobs reports. And yet his own analysis ignores the Econ 101 matter of externalities and market failures, making no mention of (nor offering any solution for) the fact that dirty energy offloads（v. To unload ）pain and costs on to innocent third parties, now and into the future.

Mr Morriss also implies that inaction is costless. The majority of 144 economists polled by New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, or 84%, agree that global warming's effects "create significant risks" to the economy, and 94% agree that the United States should join climate agreements to limit global warming.

Mr Morriss claims to be opposed to picking winners. But he apparently has no compunction about guaranteeing losers. Unless we act boldly, our present course will lead to disaster, not just ecologically but also economically.

Mr Morriss does make one valid point, citing a conservative economist, Friedrich von Hayek, that we have limited knowledge. That is true. But just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we don't know anything. In fact, we know two important things.

One, we do not have infinite amounts of carbon in the ground to burn. At some point, our earth will run out. Thus, it is sensible for governments to create incentives for alternatives to carbon-based fuels on a grand scale, now.

Two, our atmosphere does not have infinite capacity to absorb all the carbon that humanity could potentially extract and burn. If we emit too much, we will do irreparable damage to the climate.

So to avoid inevitable shortages of dirty energy and inevitable surpluses of carbon pollution, humanity must get off the present path. Governments helped lay the tracks toward this looming disaster. Governments can now throw the switch to point us in a more sustainable direction. Only then can the genius and dynamism(n.活力，推动力)of private capital power us toward a better future.

nanfeng25899UID: 2629871

comment
The athor supports his side by pointing out the fallcies of the opposition,Mr Morriss.
At last, the proposer cites two obvious facts which power us toward the green future and then draw the conclusion that  to avoid inevitable shortages of dirty energy and inevitable surpluses of carbon pollution, humanity must get off the present path.

nanfeng25899UID: 2629871

The opposition's rebuttal remarks

Mar 12th 2010 | Andrew P. Morriss

Van Jones and I agree that "the private sector, not the government, can and must be the main driver in creating green jobs". We agree that government subsidies for coal, oil and nuclear power are a serious problem. We interpret that agreed baseline in quite different ways, however.

Mr Jones sees subsidies as inevitable: it is a "truth" that "all forms of energy are heavily regulated and subsidised". Rather than get rid of wasteful subsidies that transfer money from consumers to special interests in fossil fuels, his solution is to give others their chance at the trough（n.水槽；低谷）. And that has what has happened. Far from leveling the playing field, these new subsidiesdwarf(GRE: v 变小) the old ones: solar and wind receive subsidies of over $23/Mwh compared with the $0.44/Mwh for conventional coal and $0.25/Mwh for natural gas.

He may be right about the politics—Republicans and Democrats quickly lose their zeal for ending the special interest subsidies and tax breaks they campaigned against once they get elected—but he couldn't be more wrong on the merits. That the [name your villain] industry was successful at getting subsidies in the past does not mean we should give subsidies to others today, it means we should stop all the subsidies.

Public choice theory identified a key insight about government in the 1960s and subsequent work has repeatedly demonstrated its truth. Concentrated, organised interest groups (oil companies, solar power companies, etc get benefits from governments at the expense of diverse, dispersed groups (the general public). Special interests have the advantage because the benefits received are concentrated and valuable enough to make hiring lawyers and lobbyists to manipulate the legislative and regulatory processes worthwhile. The general public, on the other hand, loses too little on each subsidy to motive a lobbying trip to Washington. As I noted in my opening, we see this in Mr Jones' field of alternative energy: the wasteful, environmentally damaging corn-based ethanol programme now deeply entrenched in （strongly established and not likely to change）our regulatory system is the result of the 1990s versions of the arguments for green energy Mr Jones makes now.

Mr Jones and I agree that the key to our energy future is innovation. We disagree about the role of the government in fostering innovation. Ironically, Mr Jones's examples of successful federal spurs（GRE:n.刺激物，激励） to innovation involve considerable environmental degradation. For example, he points to the interstate highway system, which is usually classified as a subsidy to the oil industry by alternative energy proponents since it facilitated the dramatic growth of the car industry after the second world war and helped Americans move from cities to the suburbs green advocates routinely criticise. Even more amazingly, he cites the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of the most environmentally damaging federal programmes ever created and one repeatedly charged with violating the environmental justice norms for which Mr Jones is famous.

To take just one example, the Institute for Southern Studies reported in 2009 that the TVA received EPA approval "to dump 3 millions of tons of coal ash that spilled from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in eastern Tennessee in an impoverished, largely African-American community in Alabama". In February 2010, the dump owner declared bankruptcy, a step that halted lawsuits by local residents against the dump but did not stop TVA shipments. More broadly, the 2009 report "Outside the Law: Restoring Accountability to the Tennessee Valley Authority" by the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental group Mr Jones might heed, concluded that "TVA's environmental record and conduct in recent years mock（GRE：v.嘲笑） the vision that inspired its founding".

There are examples of government programmes that foster innovation without political manipulation. Our patent laws make intellectual property rights accessible to ordinary people and helped transform the United States from a rural backwater on the margins of the world economy in 1800 to the leading industrial power in 1900. Zorina Khan's The Democratization of Invention (Cambridge University Press, 2005) details how much more widespread inventive activity was among Americans than it was among Europeans during the 19th century. Allowing inventors to reap the rewards of innovation unleashes（GRE: v.解开，解放） the wave of human creativity which Mr Jones and I agree must be the source of the means of meeting our society's energy needs.

We can spur innovation and investment without the problems Mr Jones's special-interest approach creates. Professor Jonathan Adler argues in Eyes on a Climate Prize (working paper) that if Congress provided prizes modeled on the Ansari X Prize for spaceflight, it would avoid many problems of political manipulation because prizes impose costs only when they produce results. Thomas Kalil of the University of California at Berkeley, and a former Clinton administration official, explained, in Prizes for Technological Innovation (Brookings Institution, 2006), prizes offer a means to "help to blend the best of public purpose and the creativity, energy, and passion of private sector entrepreneurial teams" without committing the government to choosing a particular recipient or strategy. Prizes "allow the government to establish a goal without being prescriptive （adj. 规定的，规范的，约定俗成的）as to how that goal should be met or who is in the best position to meet it". As we do not know what technology will deliver a new energy source, prizes offer the advantage of not precluding solutions the way bets on ethanol do.

We do not live in a world where wise and benevolent public officials thoughtfully allocate resources to benefit the public at large. We live in the real world. Special interests mobilise armies of lobbyists and lawyers, deploy rivers of campaign favours for politicians and bureaucrats, in pursuit of a chance to feed from the public trough. James Madison said it best in Federalist 51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." We must take into account the imperfections（n.不完美）
of human institutions and knowledge. Political frailties（GRE:n弱点） dictate that we disclaim the power Mr Jones seeks to mobilise and instead build institutions resistant to the disease of self-interest. Dictating our energy future from Washington, DC flunks（GRE: n /v 使考试不及格） that test.

nanfeng25899UID: 2629871

Featured guest

Daniel J. Weiss

"Providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future … because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation."
—President Barack Obama
"Every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy."
—Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC)

Pundits and pollsters bombard（GRE: v痛斥） beltway denizens daily, begging for bipartisanship（n两党合作）. President Obama and Senator Graham, the one a progressive and the other a staunch （a.坚定地）conservative, demonstrate that there is great bipartisan potential to solve immediate and long-term economic problems via investments in clean energy programmes and pricing the cost of carbon pollution. These measures would create jobs, enhance economic competitiveness, increase US energy independence and improve our national security.

By 2020, clean energy "will be the 3rd industrial sector in the world". And while the Senate ponders（v思索） its options, other nations are already seizing this economic opportunity. China boasts the most installed renewable electricity capacity. Germany has 20% more employees in renewable energy than in conventional energy. Spain's investment in energy efficiency reduced its energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) by 11% in just four years.
These and other nations understand that the transformation to a low-carbon economy has strategic benefits, including broad-based economic prosperity and energy security.

A clean energy economic transformation is one of President Obama's top domestic priorities. He believes that our immediate economic recovery and sustained job creation in the 21st century depend on it. The green jobs that result from investments in clean energy programmes are typically in existing fields, such as plumbing, construction, manufacturing and sales. These are clean energy jobs because they would either increase energy efficiency or help build or install renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels or geothermal heat pumps.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $90 billion for clean-energy investments and tax cuts, and will create nearly 900,000 new clean-energy jobs. After a slow start, 1m low-income homes will be weatherized in this critical economic recovery programme. ARRA investments saved 40,000 wind industry jobs, and will lead to doubling wind, solar and other renewable electricity generation by 2012.

To complement these efforts, Senator Graham and Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are developing "business-friendly climate legislation" that would put a declining limit on carbon air pollution. This would make dirty coal-fired electricity more expensive and drive investment toward cleaner alternatives, including natural gas, efficiency, and wind and solar power.

The US Climate Action Partnership, which includes Duke Energy, Dow Chemical, Honeywell International  and other major corporations, also supports this approach. They believe that long-term innovation and growth require clean-energy investments and reductions in carbon pollution. The business alliance notes that "by putting a price on carbon, the United States can spark（v.触发，引发）
major investments in new technologies … action on climate will strengthen the US economy and generate meaningful employment for Americans".

General Electric, another member of the partnership, warned senators that inaction would harm businesses and the economy. "Policy uncertainty not only inhibits growth, it causes disinvestment," says the company. "Not acting … sends a signal to industry—one that may have economic ramifications(GRE: n分支) for a generation."

Independent assessments confirm that clean-energy jobs and pollution reduction legislation would expand employment. An analysis by Yale University, University of California-Berkeley and University of Illinois determined that the American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed by the House of Representatives in 2009, would create nearly 2m jobs by 2020. Another study by the University of Massachusetts projects that the legislation passed by the House combined with the Recovery Act spending would generate a net 1.7m jobs.

Despite the evidence of clean-energy job growth in other nations and the United States, Big Oil and other special interests continue to oppose this economic opportunity. They base their case on the thin reed of a study by a right-wing Spanish professor working at an institute partially funded by ExxonMobil. The study claimed that investments in clean energy reduce total employment.

Two former senior Spanish government officials debunked（GRE：v揭露）
these bogus（GRE：a 虚假的） findings. They determined that the study "fails to meet even the minimum standards of academic integrity … Official figures from the Spanish Ministry of Labor prove that the sector of renewable energies has created 175,000 jobs." The New York Times reports that despite some initial missteps, the Spanish investments generally "fulfilled their promise".

The US National Renewable Energy Lab also reviewed this study, and found that "the primary conclusion … policy support of renewable energy results in net jobs losses—is not supported by their work".

Americans certainly understand the stakes. Recent polls found that clean-energy investments and global warming action have strong public support. A January survey by Republican pollster Frank Luntz determined that an overwhelming majority of respondents agreed that "we must take this opportunity to use the emerging new energy economy to create jobs and careers right here in America, not overseas".

A 2010 poll of swing states by Joel Benenson, President Obama's 2008 pollster, found nearly three-fifths of respondents would support an "energy bill that limits pollution and greenhouse gas emissions through what's been called a Cap and Trade plan and also invests in clean, renewable energy sources in America". This includes a majority of independents and nearly 40% of Republicans.

President Obama rightly argues that "we can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity". He has planted the seeds for this prosperity, but to harvest sustainable long-term economic growth and broad-based prosperity through robust（GRE: a 强壮的，健康的）job creation, the Senate must adopt comprehensive, bipartisan legislation. With leadership from Senators Graham, Kerry and Lieberman, there is an unprecedented opportunity for bipartisan cooperation in the Senate for comprehensive clean-energy legislation that would boost investments to create the jobs of tomorrow.

But the Senate must act now to keep pace with our economic rivals, expand employment opportunities, enhance American energy independence and improve our national security.

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Comments
This article begins with the opinion of the president Obama and the Senator Graham, who are in the different parties. The author state that although they cannot get agreements on many issue, but when it comes to the green economy, the bipartisanship is likely to be realized, because they accede that this strategy will enhance American economy and improve the national security. Then in order to convince us of the benefits of the green jobs, he illustrates the outcomes of many polls and studies conducted by distinct institutions ranging from the Universities to the companies. In this way, his opinion becomes more reasonable and cogent.

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THE CLOSING

The moderator's closing remarks

Mar 17th 2010 | Oliver Morton

It has been an interesting debate, and a slightly surprising one, at least to me, in that the votes have moved in a quite different way from the comments. I haven't done a numerical tally(n数字计分), and some comments are nuanced（a.细微差别的）, or gnomic（GRE: a 精辟的）, enough to defy categorization (I particularly appreciated Suleymanovic's "I think this is wrong, but it may be correct"). But my impression is that the comments from the floor have tended to go Andrew Morriss's way. The votes, though, tell a different story, with a pretty good majority for Mr Morriss turning over the first few days into an even better majority for Mr Jones, and from then on pretty much refusing to budge. You still, though, have a chance to change that, should you wish to.

The debate has not moved on particularly far from its opening, with the parties looking for different, more telling reiterations (n反复，重说)of their positions rather than taking them in new directions. A difference in emphasis, though, was introduced by Dan Weiss's comments, which put the job creation that can be ascribed to green policies into the context of American competitiveness, a frame very popular at the moment with those trying to move climate legislation through the American Senate.

This approach—crudely put, the idea that green jobs are a finite resource, and that America is being outrun（v超过，比。。。更快） in the race to get as many of them as possible by China, which intends to dominate this part of the economy—adds a new element of fear and urgency to a side of the debate which otherwise has a win–win feel. Commenter Ellis Lee gave the point resonance（GRE: n共鸣） by pointing to the greenery with which some Chinese companies are now trying to endow their skyscrapers. That said, the idea of competing for green jobs rather hides the more important difference between the two countries in this regard. Those skyscrapers are a reminder that China has a robustly growing economy, on the basis of which green job creation, like job creation of all sorts, will be considerably easier.

Another commenter, SonofBaraka, makes the interesting point that while government commitment to green jobs means some level of interference in the market, it might in the end reduce that interference by moving more and more people off grid and into self-sufficiency, obviating the need for much of the paraphernalia（n随身物品） of regulations. This is not perhaps a compelling argument, but it did strike me as a fresh one in this context.

In its image of regulation withering away（幻灭，枯萎） it would certainly not compel Mr Morriss, who has continued to make strong points about the enduring and often baleful legacy of past intervention. The distortion and subsidy endemic（GRE: a地方性的） in the energy sector, which green-jobs advocates seek to shift to fit their agenda, have a history. That history is one of earlier policy entrepreneurs attempting to adapt the sector to their own needs, and special interests capturing those attempts. The inductive（a.归纳的） argument that what happened then, again and again, will happen now is not conclusive: induction never is, because things do change. But it is definitely powerful.

At the same time, Mr Jones has returned to the point that there is a separate, and prior, need to change the energy sector in response to fears about climate change, among other things. Given that this has to happen, and that the market will not bring it about unaided, seeking at the margins to increase employment as it does seems a no-brainer (which is not to say that the point's elaboration is not thoughtful). At the moment, he seems to be commanding your assent. And he might well have done so if the motion had been more precisely formulated, perhaps along the admirably clear-thinking lines that commenter KTehJE94S7 suggests: "It is desirable that governments adjust the policy environment in such a way such that jobs which consume fewer natural resources than they produce increase in number."

nanfeng25899UID: 2629871

NEW DEBATE

This house believes that GDP growth is a poor measure of improving living standards.

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About this debate

When economists want to compare living standards in one country with those in another, or to track how much richer a country has become over time, they usually look at gross domestic product (GDP). The growth of GDP, adjusted for changes in population and prices, is the commonest measure of changes in living standards. But is it a good one?

GDP was designed to estimate the value of goods and services produced in a country. Critics say that as a measure of living standards it misses out too much, such as the state of the environment, people's health, leisure and the distribution of income. Does a rising GDP mean that people are happier as well as richer? Is it time, as a Nobel economics laureate(n.得奖人)has said, for an end to "GDP fetishism（n.盲目崇拜）"? Or is GDP, for all its flaws, a good enough estimate of society's material well-being? Should GDP be ditched（GRE：n 沟渠；壕沟v 丢弃）, or is the search for better measures a fool's errand（GRE：n 差事）?

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Economics focus

Measuring what matters

Man does not live by GDP alone. A new report urges statisticians to capture what people do live by

Sep 17th 2009 | From The Economist print edition

Illustration by Jac Depczyk

HOW well off are Americans? Frenchmen? Indians? Ghanaians? An economist’s simplest answer is the gross domestic product, or GDP, per person of each country. To help you compare the figures, he will convert them into dollars, either at market exchange rates or (better) at purchasing-power-parity rates, which allow for the cheapness of, say, haircuts and taxi rides in poorer parts of the world.

To be sure, this will give you a fair guide to material standards of living: the Americans and the French, on average, are much richer than Indians and Ghanaians. But you may suspect, and the economist should know, that this is not the whole truth. America’s GDP per head is higher than France’s, but the French spend less time at work, so are they really worse off? An Indian may be desperately poor and yet say he is happy; an American may be well fed yet fed up. GDP was designed to measure only the value of goods and services produced in a country, and it does not even do that precisely. How well off people feel also depends on things GDP does not capture, such as their health or whether they have a job. Environmentalists have long complained that GDP treats the despoliation（n.抢劫，掠夺） of the planet as a plus (via the resulting economic output) rather than a minus (forests destroyed).

In recent years economists have therefore been looking at other measures of well-being—even “happiness”, a notion that it once seemed absurd to quantify. Among those convinced that official statisticians should join in is Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. On September 14th a commission he appointed last year, comprising 25 prominent social scientists, five with Nobel prizes in economics, presented its findings*. Joseph Stiglitz, the group’s chairman and one of the laureates, said the 292-page report was a call to abandon “GDP fetishism”. France’s national statistics agency, Mr Sarkozy declared, should broaden its purview（GRE：n范围）.

The commission divided its work into three parts. The first deals with familiar criticisms of GDP as a measure of well-being. It takes no account of the depreciation of capital goods, and so overstates the value of production. Moreover, the value of production is based on market prices, but not everything has a price. The list of such things includes more than the environment. The worth of services not supplied through markets, such as state health care or education, owner-occupied housing or unpaid child care by parents, is “imputed”—estimated, using often rickety （GRE：a.摇摇晃晃的，不牢固的）assumptions—or left out, even though private health care and schooling, renting and child-minding are directly measured.

The report also argues that official statisticians should concentrate on households’ incomes, consumption and wealth rather than total production. All these adjustments make a difference. In 2005, the commission found, France’s real GDP per person was 73% of America’s. But once government services, household production and leisure are added in, the gap narrows: French households had 87% of the adjusted income of their American counterparts. No wonder Mr Sarkozy is so keen.

Sizing up the good life

Next the commission turns to measures of the “quality of life”. These attempt to capture well-being beyond a mere command of economic resources. One approach quantifies people’s subjective well-being—divided into an overall judgment about their lives (a “ladder of life” score) and moment-by-moment flows of positive and negative feelings. For many years researchers had been spurred（GRE：v 刺激，鞭策） on by an apparent paradox: that rising incomes did not make people happier in the long run. Recent studies suggest, though, that countries with higher GDP per person do tend to have higher ladder-of-life scores. Exactly what, beyond income, affects subjective well-being—from health, marital status and age to perceptions of corruption—is much pored over（钻研）. The unemployed report lower scores, even allowing for their lower incomes. Joblessness hits more than your wallet.

Third, the report examines the well-being of future generations. People alive today will pass on a stock of exhaustible and other natural resources as well as machines, buildings and social institutions. Their children’s human capital (skills and so forth) will depend on investment in education and research today. Economic activity is sustainable if future generations can expect to be at least as well off as today’s. Finding a single measure that captures all this, the report concludes, seems too ambitious. That sounds right. For one thing, statisticians would have to make assumptions about the relative value of, say, the environment and new buildings—not just today, but many years from now. It is probably wiser to look at a wide range of figures.

Some members of the commission believe that the financial crisis and the recession have made a broadening of official statistics more urgent. They think there might have been less euphoria（GRE：n幸福愉快感） had financial markets and policymakers been less fixated on GDP. That seems far-fetched. Stockmarket indices, soaring house prices and low inflation surely did more to feed bankers’ and borrowers’ exaggerated sense of well-being.

Broadening official statistics is a good idea in its own right. Some countries have already started—notably, tiny Bhutan. There are pitfalls, though. The report justifies wider measures of well-being partly by noting that the public must have trust in official statistics. Quite so; which makes it all the more important that the statisticians are independent of government. The thought of grinning（GRE：v露齿笑） politicians telling people how happy they are is truly Orwellian. Another risk is that a proliferation of measures could be a gift to interest groups, letting them pick numbers that amplify their misery in order to demand a bigger share of the national pie. But these are early days. Meanwhile, get measuring.

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Comments
This article begins with the questionable sentences that who are more well-off  
The author points out that GDP, a poor measure of our enconomy, fails to consider many factors such as the indictors of the happiness, the unemplyment, the healthy situation and the educational standards. Although finding a measure that capture all this is too ambious, we indeed need to take more statistics into account. And France is the pioneer in this issue.

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The moderator's opening remarks

Apr 20th 2010 | Patrick Lane  

Finding ways to improve humanity's living standards is the point of economics. Having a good measure of living standards, you may think, is therefore pretty fundamental to the discipline. For decades economists have turned to gross domestic product (GDP) when they want an estimate of how well off people are. By how much are Americans better off than Indians, or than their parents' generation? Chances are the answer will start with GDP.

GDP is really a measure of an economy's output, valued at market prices (to the extent that you have them). As societies produce more, and therefore earn more, their material well-being rises. So it is no surprise that so many economists and official statisticians broadly accept GDP as a measure of living standards.

It isn't the only measure. Even before the recent recession, a lot of debate over American living standards was based not on GDP, which was growing healthily¬, but on median incomes, which were not: the point was that national output was growing, but that its fruits were not being evenly shared. It doesn't cover everything: not all the things that we value are bought and sold in the marketplace. But when economists want to measure the living standards of whole societies, GDP is where they usually start.

That said, economists and statisticians have been debating for years whether GDP measures what truly matters. It may capture material wealth, broadly, but is that enough? If it is not enough, with what should it be replaced—or, more likely, supplemented? With assessments of the environment? Measures of people's health? Estimates of their happiness? And how might all these different aspects be combined? If some new measure is closely correlated with GDP, then GDP, though imperfect, may be good enough. If it is not, then focusing on GDP could be an error of more than just measurement: governments that pursue GDP growth may be making their citizens worse off than they might be.

The Economist's latest online debate is intended to wrestle（v.摔跤；努力解决） with these questions. Andrew Oswald, of the University of Warwick, is proposing the motion that "GDP growth is a poor measure of improving living standards". Opposing him is Steven Landefeld, director of the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which produces America's national income and product accounts, of which GDP is a prominent feature.

Mr Oswald's starting point is a report published last year by a commission chaired by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economics laureate. The Stiglitz commission (of which Mr Oswald was a member, and which was written about in The Economist last September argued that official statistics should shift away from measuring production to measuring "well-being". Mr Oswald points to two pieces of evidence in particular: the Easterlin Paradox, the finding that increasing wealth does not make countries happier; and global warming, which is a sign that people should produce less and enjoy the planet more.

Mr Landefeld remarks that GDP was not intended to be a comprehensive measure of society's well-being. Even so, he says, it has stood up well as a measure of living standards. Nothing has bettered it yet. That isn't to say that GDP can't be improved, though—and Mr Landefeld points to ways in which the BEA has been trying to bring that about. He too notes the conclusions of Mr Stiglitz's commission.

These promises to be a lively and enjoyable debate on an important subject: how much use is GDP in measuring how well off people are? Mr Oswald and Mr Landefeld have set out what they think. I'm glad that we have two such prominent people to lead the debate. And I'm looking forward to the next round of arguments and to what you, on the floor of our online chamber, have to say.

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Comments
Mr. Patrick uses this article as a brief summary of this debate.
First of all, he remarks that GDP, one of most important indictors, is the start to evaluate our economics.
Then, he comes up with the debate between Mr. Oswald and Mr. Landefeld that argue whether GDP is a comprehensive measure of living standards. The author also states their both opinion in brief.
In the end, he express his expectation toward this hot debate.

nanfeng25899UID: 2629871

The proposer's opening remarks

Apr 20th 2010 | Andrew Oswald   

"A … key message, and unifying theme of the report, is that the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people's well-being."
(Executive Summary: Stiglitz Commission Report)

GDP is a gravely dated pursuit. It is time to listen to the Stiglitz Report.

The first reason is the evidence known as the Easterlin Paradox (the empirical finding that countries do not become happier as they grow wealthier). The second reason is that global warming means it is necessary for Homo sapiens to make fewer things rather than more, to travel less except on their feet, to lean on the direct energy of the sun and water rather than on the smashed fuel of buried trees, to value tranquil beauty more and 160mph motor cars less.

These arguments are key parts of the recent Stiglitz Report.

• Life is now more complex and services dominate ("The time has come to adapt our system of measurement … to better reflect the structural changes which have characterised the evolution of modern economies.")
• We, as a society, need to measure well-being per se. ("A … unifying theme of the report is that the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people's well-being.")
• Official government statistics should blend objective and subjective well-being data. ("Statistical offices should incorporate questions to capture people's life evaluations, hedonic experiences and priorities in their own survey.")
• Sustainability must be a criterion. ("Sustainability assessment requires a well-identified dashboard of indicators … the components of this dashboard should be … interpretable as variations of some underlying "stocks".)

I am optimistic. Eventually the green movement will discover the data of the Easterlin Paradox, named after Richard Easterlin, a famous Californian economist, and also become aware of the statistical evidence on declining emotional prosperity that I describe below. Although fine young scholars like Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers doubt the veracity（GRE：n 真实性） of it, they are heavily outnumbered（v数量上超过—）: the weight of published evidence is in line with Mr Easterlin's paradox.

Moreover, Ms Stevenson and Mr Wolfers themselves agree that America, perhaps the iconic（a.图像的，肖像的，图标的） GDP-chasing nation, is not becoming happier through time.

If we look at broader measures of psychological well-being, the newest longitudinal research suggests there are reasons to be more pessimistic than Easterlin. Although further research evidence needs to be collected, this is what we currently know.

Worryingly, emotional prosperity and mental health appear from the latest data to be getting worse through time. This disturbing conclusion emerges from these seven studies:

• Sacker and Wiggins (2002)
• Hodiamont et al. (2005)
• Verhaak et al. (2005)
• Green and Tsitsianis (2005)
• Wauterickx and Bracke (2005)
• Oswald and Powdthavee (2007)
• Sweeting et al. (2009)

Why? We are not yet certain. But, first, humans are animals of comparison (some of the newest evidence, from brain scans, is reported in Fliessbach et al., 2007). What I want subconsciously is to have three zoomy BMWs and for my colleagues in the office corridor at work to have mere rusting, spluttering（v 发出杂音，杂乱而仓促地说） Fords. Unfortunately, the tide of economic growth lifts all boats, so where having three glamorous cars was unusual, eventually it becomes the norm, and any relative gains are thereby neutralised. Second, people choose things—such as high-pressure kinds of work and long commutes away from their families and their dogs and their fishing buddies—that, despite what they think, will often not make them happier. Economists have ignored the research on "affective forecasting mistakes" by psychologists like Daniel Gilbert; they need to wake up to it.

Unsurprisingly, the citizens of the rich nations find it difficult to grasp that higher gross domestic product from this point onwards will not make society happier. Like people in earlier times who could not conceive of themselves as creatures glued by gravity onto a spherical planet, they trust their intuitions (because as individuals they like to become richer and assume whole countries must be the same). One cannot blame them. But the evidence shows they are wrong.

As an undergraduate, I was taught that economics is a social science concerned with the efficient allocation of scarce resources. In 2010, a better definition is needed. Economics is a social science concerned with the way to allocate plentiful resources to maximise a society's emotional prosperity and mental health.

A gravely dated pursuit.

nanfeng25899UID: 2629871

Comments:
  The author, to begin with, expresses his opinion by citing the report of Nobel Prize Laurel Stiglitz. He thinks it is time for us swift to another effective measure.

  By illustrating seven studies, he claims that although he is optimistic about the economy and the prosperity of the society, the data showed us that we are definitely not happier as the wealth is growing, which mostly are attributable to two reasons: firstly, human are the animal of comparison and secondly, in order to become richer, they always choose the things which can make them happier.
At last, he iterate hat we should abandon the dated tools, that is GDP,to measure our development.