Robert Kennedy on GDP

In 1968, U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy gave an impassioned speech about using GDP as the measure of a nation's wealth:

We will never find a purpose for our nation nor for our personal satisfaction in the mere search for economic well-being, in endlessly amassing terrestrial goods. We cannot measure the national spirit on the basis of the Dow-Jones, nor can we measure the achievements of our country on the basis of the gross domestic product.

Our 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 those who break them. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. 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 tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

What do you think, reading this 40 years later? Evaluate Robert Kennedy's ideas.

Are newspapers worth saving?

A recent article says "YES":

With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks... Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible. Cardin's office said his bill was aimed at preserving local and community newspapers, not conglomerates which may also own radio and TV stations.

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."

Newspaper subscriptions and advertising have shrunk dramatically in the past few years as Americans have turned more and more to the Internet or television for information. In recent months, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle have ceased daily publication or announced that they may have to stop publishing. In December the Tribune Company, which owns a number of newspapers including The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times filed for bankruptcy protection.

What do you think? Are newspapers going the way of horse-drawn carriages? Write about two in-depth connections to our intro unit on macroeconomics: GDP, the business cycle, unemployment, and/or inflation.

I, Pencil...

Another way to summarize all we've done in class so far is to look at all the economic interactions needed to produce a relatively simple good like a pencil.

A pencil, by almost any measure, is an exquisitely complex thing. Somewhere in a harvested forest was the stand of cedar trees that gave up their wood to provide the pencil's dowel. Somewhere in the Jamaican interior is the bauxite mine that provided the raw material for its little aluminum sleeve. Somewhere in the coal belt is the mine that provided the lump carbon for the graphite. Still elsewhere is the lab where the raw polymers were cooked up into rubbery erasers. And to those places that provided those things streamed still other things -- the smelting ovens for the metal plants, the autoclaves for the rubber labs, the blades for the sawmills, the backhoes for the carbon mines, the cotton to dress the lab workers, the bacon to feed the lumberjacks, the paymasters and truck drivers and box packers and shipping managers to keep all of the operations humming. A vast industrial machine rises up, switches on, and at its far end, spits out... a pencil, arguably one of the most complicated objects in the world. From Simplexity, by Jeffrey Kluger

Wow! Isn't that incredible? Think about all that in light of all we've learned in class. Choose another "simple" good and write about all the economic interactions that "magically" came together to get that good onto the shelves of Al Jazira market.