Re: Not always joking, it seems

On Feb 21, 4:24 am, David Friedman
<d...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> So far as your question is concerned ...  . I don't
> have a source for the HDI for the U.S. over time. But
> real income per capita has been going up, life
> expectancy has been going up. I don't know how they
> are defining the literacy rate, but the UNESCO figure
> for the U.S. in 1995 was 99.5%. Various other sources
> seem to say 99%. So I doubt it's been changing much. I
> expect one could work out the enrollment ratio from
> stat abstract figures, but I haven't done so.

The HDI, like the GISS, is a figure that allows
excessive creativity in its construction.  There are
frequent striking discrepancies between HDI and other
indicators.

In practice, the HDI tends to be a measure of
governmental good intentions, as those intentions are
intepreted by those compiling the GISS - that is to say,
it tends to rely on government inputs, and government
measures of government accomplishments, so wether the
HDI is good depends entirely on the compiler's judgment
of the purpose and intent of those inputs, and the
compiler's judgment of the validity of the the measure
of accomplishment.  If the compiler suspects the
government to be wicked, the compiler will discount
inputs.  If the compiler interprets the government as
untruthful, it will conclude the governments measures of
its accomplishments are lies, or do not quite measure
what they should measure.

In practice, then, the HDI is a measure of how much
those compiling the HDI approve of the governments they
are measuring.