We Need a New Indicator

GDP is so yesterday. All it does is count every expenditure, and having totaled them all up, publishes the number, the worthy minions of the Bureau of Economic Analysis having labored long and hard—because it’s tough to find all of the expenditures—or their equivalents, all the receipts, reported as the Gross Domestic Income (GDI). We need something more meaningful, something now.

My proposal is that we develop the GDE. Those letters here should, in the future, be known to every breathing soul past twenty. They stand for Gross Domestic Elite. And just as the economic accounts are divided into two, so could the GDE. Here I propose GDE-W and GDE-C. The W stands for wealth and will measure how concentrated wealth becomes. The C stands for culture and will measure (alas) how culture declines. The ideal monthly and quarterly reports will happily say that GDE-W is up and GDE-C is down. The best of all worlds.

As the two old indicators are always supposed to produce the same number, so W and C will be complementary. If one goes up, the other must go down. Supposing a huge chunk of wealth is donated to a cultural enterprise. C goes up, but W goes down. So here, too, we can keep government honest in its reporting.

The new Bureau of Elite Analysis will have its work cut out—beginning with the problem that its initials are the same as those of the BEA, the GDP folks. But its all about toughness, isn’t it. When things get tough, the tough get going. GDE-W will be easier to measure because money is involved. One measure, the Gini Index, could be immediately applied. It measures income inequality—and I’m happy to report that Gini is pointing up—so inequality is increasing.

The GDE-C will be a little harder; BEA2’s motto therefore might be, “The difficult we do today, the impossible will take a little longer.” The C measure would, of course, sometimes go down, sometimes up. It went up today because, as a spokesman for BEA2 might  have noted at the morning briefings, that the viewership of American Idol is dropping sharply, hence culture is on the rise. But the other day I noticed that our principal NPR station has begun to fill the afternoon hours with musical programming—not actual music but talk about music and musicians, including long and intimate explorations of how this or that song came to be. The station has also decided to import the Canadian program Q, which is (you guessed it) mostly about music. If BEA2 already existed, I would immediately alert them of this fact so that it could be factored into next month’s C report. NPR is caving to the new; we should note that in real numbers!

Much work lies ahead. The Obama administration, wishing to create jobs, should make it Job 1 to announce the GDE and to form BEA2. Let’s roll up our shirtsleeves!

Now Here’s A First

On the way back from Florida, in a Days Inn motel in Gainesville, no less, we opened the drawer of the nightstand and found in it, next to the TV remote, a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. Years ago—to be sure that was in Utah—I’d once encountered the Book of Mormon instead of the ubiquitous Gideon Bible, but this holy book was a genuine surprise! This particular version is subtitled As It Is and is a rendition of the text by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Now by way of completing the interestingly evolving picture of American Culture in the twenty-first century, this particular Days Inn was evidently owned and managed by a Chinese family—whereas, in Northern Michigan, for instance, virtually all motels are managed by Hindus. And this find, to give it more underlining, was in Gainesville, Florida. We live in wondrous times… (Florida notes.)

Cultural Indicator: The Opposition Response

Since 1790 U.S. presidents gave a State of the Union report—and no response from any opposition followed. For much of our history, these reports were written rather than spoken. This repeated for 176 years until, in 1966, with Lyndon Johnson president, began the practice of an opposition response. Since then, with but one exception, Lyndon Johnson’s last State of the Union, every oral presentation of this report has been followed by negative congressional echoes.

I still remember, when the first one came (and every time after) thinking that this was somehow wrong. We don’t have two or three presidents. Why two or three states of the union? The Constitution, Article II, Section 3, requires the president to give such reports. There’s nothing in the Constitution about an Opposition Response. The response demeans the office, degrades the symbol—and when the symbols are tarnished, look out.

Certain kinds of opposition are out of place. When the Queen of England Speaks—to be sure echoing sentiments approved by the majority in Parliament—the opposition keeps mum. My perception is that respect for the office of president in our country has been visibly declining, and ever-increasing “opposition responses” to every major presidential address are the formal sign of that. The actual signs are many and increasing—thus behavior that actual signals contempt for the president, done by a nod and a wink, but clearly understood by vast constituencies. But therein lies genuine danger.

Grim although the prospect is—and unlikely that I’ll actually live to see it—this too shall pass. A time will come when some future president will speak and no one will rise to give a response—because it might prove lethal. And after that future presidents won’t bother giving states of the union, either, because there will no longer be a union in our current sense. Time is on my side. Whatever rises is sure to fall; whatever sinks is sure to rise again. And when it does, it won’t be pretty. Pay me now or pay me later.

Imperial Nudity

In recent days we’ve had a very public re-enactment of the story about the boy who saw that the emperor wore no clothes and innocently dared to say it out loud. In our own time, however, in which sexism and ageism are both hate crimes, we’ve been careful to observe the etiquette so that the Crier of Nudity in our case was an old woman.

At the American Pavilion

We watched a televised report some days ago about Expo 2010 now underway in Shanghai. The lines leading up to the American Pavilion seemed very crowded and long. They suggested even to people like us looking at the scene through TV-eyes that the Chinese population is fascinated with America. Part of this reportage was a brief interview with a Chinese lady. She was asked about her impression of America. She gave a curious answer. In so many words she said that she'd been pleasantly surprised. Americans seemed friendly and human and nice. What about her impression before she came to this exhibit? How did she view America before she came? She said that her impression had been that America is harsh and bullying.

Old memories suddenly surfaced. We too had once been drawn to these shores by American charm—which still flowed in large and fragrant waves back sixty years ago with World War II a very recent memory. We learned of the other side of this culture when, at the first or second introductory lecture about America—attending which was compulsory during a pre-embarkation period—our leader held forth for an hour about the importance of shining our shoes as if such an activity were not only neglected in Europe but totally unknown.

I recall—and this is off the subject, or is it?—an amusing story I once came across in a Japanese travel guide from the nineteenth century. The Japanese story-teller was attempting to tutor his audience about American behavior. Two men meet in America, he said. Each will reach into his pocket and urge the other to accept a cigar. An energetic exchange will follow, a lot of waving of cigars in the other person’s face. Finally the inferior of the two will yield and accept the proffered object.