When in Doubt, Hide the Weenie

The European elite’s long tradition of “redefining” things that illustrate apparent problems is legend – redefining infant mortality, and other sorts of asking what the meaning if is is. However one penchance the EU would like to pick up from the French, is the redefinition of GDP figures to take into account social multipliers and modifiers not derived from impirical sources – in effect destroying the value of any hard-gathered data to spook the public and markets into a false confidence about their economy.

The European Commission has published a roadmap for developing new environmental and social indicators to measure the real prosperity and wellbeing of nations beyond traditional GDP. The reflections could affect the strategic goals of the post-2010 Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs.

GDP growth is the main indicator for measuring the effectiveness of recovery plans launched last year to restore economic growth.

Why yes, yes it is. So the way to evade the ineffectual nature of borrowing for capital injection on this scale is basically to lie about it. In effect, having a petit cannon to take the edge off of the hangover, remorse, and herpetic itch that you woke up with.

In reality, all it could do is make people’s lot worse by polluting the data from which large groups of people and markets make decisions. In effect it will create market bubbles, and inevitable bursts. Worse still, the reality of these bursts will be inured into further unrealistic economic data. But what the hell, from their perspective, it’ll be worth it for a little PR. Expect similar reality inverting abstractions from ObamaNation if things go any further south too.

According to the EU executive, the reflection could also "contribute to setting new strategic goals for the post-2010 Lisbon Strategy".

"The special importance of this system is that it would include stock-taking of natural resources and human and social capital, rather than just the use of these resources. The system would also focus on the role of eco-systems in providing welfare," declared the Commission upon announcing the initiative in 2007.

Which is to say that ”Instruments exchanged shall be augmented to reflect instruments NOT exchanged”... Got it? Similarly: new job losses can then stay the same as those who have given up looking can go beyond being excluded, but added to the roles of the employed. A deeply buried footnote with indicate that “employed” has been redefined to mean anyone who isn’t actively looking for a job.

Ideologically, it fits the bill, since the notion the left have held onto so far is that the only use statistics have, is for conflating into menacing quasi-facts for their shock value in the jamming of overbearing centralization policies down an otherwise wiser public’s throat.

Ecological and carbon footprints are "close candidates" for developing indicators for a comprehensive environmental index to complement GDP, according to the Commission. But it stresses that "both are limited in scope," as the carbon footprint only takes into account greenhouse gas emissions and the ecological footprint excludes any impact on water, for example.

The reason they are close candidates is because they are so pliant, given the selective means by which THOSE figures can be ginned up drawn.

One thing we know from half a century of Marxist-Leninism is that the accurate rendition of reality provides for the flux that keeps revolutionary emotions raw and pliant, and in the favor of their ideological objectives – which invariably involve trying to make a “new man” by rewriting the laws of nature. What’s been firmly established at this point is that the not-openly-stated instincts of both the EU and the current US Administration, is that they defer to the methods of hyper-centralized statism and policy imposition in a way that is no different than that of the former Soviet Union and its’ then satellites.

At the initiative of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, France set up a high-level Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress in 2008. The commission is chaired by Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist, and aims to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, real people see the GDP to mean the GDP, from which accurate impressions of social progress, particulary poverty, can be clearly and realistically understood, not hidden in a miasma of predetermined inferences.

This, as we’ve seen all too often before in European history, is an attempt to control the interpretation of reality based on what the public is permitted to learn, and limited from knowing. If they really think that they’re offering up some “brand new age of freedom” world view, the destruction of instruments like those is the way to go, not recycling the contemporary equivalent of “announcing another successful 5 year plan”. I wonder if they really realize that they appear to be living in a philosophical near-past that they should otherwise take heed of, one characterized by the chewing-up of a frail population in the name of improving their lives. The view itself is a regurgitation lebensraum delusion, handed off to a new generation, a new “human mass”, when in reality the mass needed to be permitted to release its’ cogs into enabled individuals who can act autonomously.

The failure of their history is to see people as “the people” which could be handled and controlled as a unit, a tool, and an inconvenience. It’s also those that buy into it who have such a hard time grasping what it is Americans mean by their freedoms. No matter how often the people of rump Europa get donkey punched by dictat and history, they never seem to grasp even the outline of this idea.

Then, the “ideal man” was stupid and pliant. For whatever collection of popularly shared reasons for which the evasion is supposed to be a cure, (normally the reason used is the ‘climate change’ hostage-taking brand of environmental issues), the forgetful children of the meek who inherited the continent are trying it again.