Andrew Yang Policy on IMPROVE THE AMERICAN SCORECARD

[Sherman A1]

Traditionally, the economy has been measured by looking at the GDP or the stock market. Employment rates and household income are also used to measure how the average worker is doing.

However, even the creator of the GDP admits that it doesn’t really reflect the full story. And, as economic inequality rises and the fruits of society’s labors accrue to fewer individuals, it’s become obvious that we need to expand our definition of economic prosperity past a single number. The bottom 80% of Americans only own 8% of stocks and rising GDP has virtually no relationship with each citizen’s wellbeing.

When you measure something, you implicitly set your policy goals. By focusing our measurement on GDP, we’ve promoted production over all else. It’s time to start measuring economic prosperity using a wider index that measures human as well as monetary indicators, such as (but not limited to):

Quality of life and health-adjusted life expectancy
Happiness/Well-Being and Mental Health
Underemployment
Income Inequality
Consumer and Student Debt
Work and civic engagement levels
Volunteerism
Infant mortality
Quality of infrastructure
Access to education
Marriage and divorce rates
Substance abuse and related deaths
National optimism
Personal dynamism/economic mobility

https://www.yang2020.com/policies/measuring-the-economy/

[drray23]

1. thats a good point. However, all of these indicators are already available one way or another

For example, there are numerous studies/rankings about quality of life, life expectancy, healthcare etc.. What is lacking is a place where they are all agglomerated to show the full picture.

This will help but not solve the problem. A significant part of americans would not be receptive to some of that, many can not interpret a simple graph or understand statistics.

That is why charisma and the art of translating sophisticated indicators or policies into a language that can resonate with the electorate is critical.

[drray23]

2. further thinking about that this is a great opportunity for a data scientist

to create such a website. americanscorecard.com or something like that.. which would gather up all those statistics in simple, colorfull graphs.