Re: equation to describe the economy

Quirk wrote:

Lantern wrote:


I think such an equation must include "Quality of Life" or "Well
Being".



I've always liked the argument that the best indicator is infant
mortality rate. Simple, unbiased, normative, based on outcomes....

Infant deaths per 1,000 live births for 2004:

Sweden          2.8
Japan           3.3
Finland         3.6
Norway          3.7
Czech Republic  4.0
Germany         4.2
France          4.3
Switzerland     4.4
Spain           4.5
Denmark         4.6
Austria         4.7
Australia       4.8
Canada          4.8
Portugal        5.1
United Kingdom  5.2
Ireland         5.5
Greece          5.6
New Zealand     6.0
Italy           6.1
United States   6.6

In terms of median "Quality of life," that order looks about right to
me.

Homicide and suicide rates are two more outcomes statistics I think
tell you quite a bit about the Quality of life. You could combine the
these somehow, but you could never get the compostion weighting
"correct," so I would go with infant mortality rate, as it tells you
something about the general wealth, commitment to public
infrastructure, egalitarianism and priorities of the society.

IMHO, looking to things like GDP for qualitative meaning is next to
useless, despite the fact that the USA has per-capita GDP of nearly
double the Czech Republic, and spends a higher percentage of it on
health care, over 50% more infants die. That speaks volumes to me, as
perserving the lives of infants is an inherent human goal, towards
which the vast majority of parents would expend any wealth they had
access to.

Regards.


There've been highly structured historical societies that
practiced outright exposure of infants. The obsession with
infant survival beyond mother-child bond is an artifact
of 14th/15th Century Europe's obsession with child loss
during the Black Death. It is therefore, by
counterexample, not "inherently human" - it's actually
an anthropological exception. Most societies were not
all that enamored of another mouth to feed, except
when that mouth meant a high probability of useable
labor.

Clearly, there's no single metric to assign numbers on
big foam fingers for each nation. And I'm surprised
Canada is so far down the list - except that Canada is
highly immigrant. Child death is a cost of immmigration.

If anything, the above list looks like a predictor of
cultural homogeneity and/or low birth rates.

--
Les Cargill
.

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