Defining True Progress

If your're on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back the soonest is the most progressive man.  C.S Lewis

This cartoon appeared here.

Obama: ‘We can’t just cut our way to prosperity’

By Robert Romano

Why does the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) include government spending as a component of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?  The answer may be that’s how economist Simon Kuznets, who developed the measure, saw things. In his 1934 report “Report on National Income” to Congress, he acknowledged there might be skepticism over its inclusion in the measure.  “There may be some doubt as to the propriety of classifying government (Federal, State, county and city) as a branch of the country’s economic system, and of treating its activity as an economic pursuit,” Kuznets wrote, adding, “the motive of immediate profit, which characterizes private industry, is conspicuously absent from the activity of the government.”  To Read More.....