Just as in America, in Britain too, the story told by official statistics does not alwaysmatch people’s experience.That is especially true in places like Newcastle, a former shipbuilding city, which lost out to competition from Asia in the 1970s and has seen living standards stagnate ever since.The U.S. economy, we are told, is booming.
In the past two quarters, gross domestic product has risen by more than 3%, the stock market is soaring and unemployment is down to a 17-year low of 4.1%. Many people, though,don’t feel that upside.The perception gap is huge. Unemployment, more broadly measured, is higher than the headline number suggests because many people have simply given up looking for work or are working in part-time jobs when they want a full-time job.
One of the prime faults of GDP is that it deals in averages and aggregates.Aggregates hide the inequality. And averages don’t tell us very much at all.Barring a few recessions,the U.S. economy has been on a near relentless upward path since the 1950s. Yet according to a Pew Research Center report, the average hourly wage for nonmanagement private-sector work was $20.67 in 2014, just $1.49 higher than in 1964, adjusted for inflation.
Studies suggest that people care more about relative than absolute wealth.If that is true, then as a minority have become richer, the majority have grown more miserable. In a famous experiment carried out at Emory University, two monkeys were put side by side and given cucumbers as a reward for performing a task. When one of the monkeys was given better-tasting grapes instead, the monkey receiving cucumbers became distraught,flinging its now despised reward at its trainer.The problems with using GDP as a barometer go beyond masking inequality.
Invented in the US in the 1930s,the figure is a child of the manufacturing age–good at measuring physical production but not the services that dominate modern economies. How would GDP measure the quality of mental-health care or the availability of day-care centers and parks in your area? Eventhe Belarusian economistwho practically invented GDP do not like the fact that it counted armaments and financial speculation as positive outputs. Above all, he said,GDP should never be confused with well-being.That suggests we need to find different ways of measuring our success.For the most part,we have become obsessed with a single measure that offers only limited information.
【参考译文】比如，在美国，还有英国，官方统计数据和人们的感受并不总是相符，这种情况对诸如纽卡斯尔这样的城市来说尤为如此。纽卡斯尔此前曾是一个造船城市，20世纪70年代不敌来自亚洲国家的竞争，人民生活水平从此一直停滞不前。我们被告知，美国经济正快速发展。
前两个季度，国内生产总值(GDP)增长超3%，股市飘红，失业率降至4.1%，创17年来的新低。但是，许多人感受不到这种经济增长。数据和人们感知之间的差距十分巨大。若从广义程度上衡量失业率，那么它则要比报纸头条刊登的数字要高些，因为许多人干脆不找工作了，或者在找工作时做着兼职工作。
GDP的一个主要缺陷就是它反映的是总数和平均数。看总数的话，就看不到不平等的一面，而平均数根本没有什么实质性的信息。美国经济自20世纪50年代以来除了几次经济衰退外，一直不断高速增长。但皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)的一份报告表明，扣除通货膨胀因素后，2014年私营部门非管理层员工的时薪为20.67美元，比1964年仅多出1.49美元。
多项研究显示，比起绝对所得，人们更加关心相对所得。如果事实是那样的话，在少数人变富的同时，多数人就得变的更穷。埃默里大学(Emory University)做过一个的著名实验，将两只猴子放在一起，每完成一项任务就奖励一根黄瓜。将给一只猴子的黄瓜替换成更美味的葡萄后，另一只猴子变的十分狂乱起来，并拿嫌弃的黄瓜砸向训练人员。除了掩盖经济不平等情况这个弊端外，将GDP作为经济晴雨表还存在其他问题。
GDP是美国在20世纪30年代提出的，属于制造业时代的产物，适用于统计物质生产，却不适合衡量在现代经济中处于主导地位的各种服务。GDP如何衡量精神健康护理的质量，如何衡量社区周围的日托中心和公园的存在价值?即便是实际发明GDP的白俄罗斯经济学家也不喜欢将军备和金融投机归入到GDP统计中。他说，总之，永远不要将GDP与民生混为一谈。这意味着我们需要寻找其他方法来衡量经济增长的成就。但是在大多数情况下，我们只信奉单一的衡量方法(即GDP)，虽然它提供信息的有限。
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