The New York Times uncovers a rather disturbing oversight that economists are just now focusing on.

Actually, disturbing isn’t the right word. Terrifying is much more of an accurate descriptor.

In any event…

The fundamental shortcoming is in the way imports are accounted for. A carburetor bought for $50 in China as a component of an American-made car, for example, more often than not shows up in the statistics as if it were the American-made version valued at, say, $100. The failure to distinguish adequately between what is made in America and what is made abroad falsely inflates the gross domestic product, which sums up all value added within the country.

American workers lose their jobs when carburetors they once made are imported instead. The federal data notices the decline in employment but fails to revalue the carburetors or even pinpoint that they are foreign-made. Because it seems as if $100 carburetors are being produced but fewer workers are needed to do so, productivity falsely rises — in the national statistics.

“We don’t have the data collection structure to capture what is happening in a real time way, or what is being traded and how it is affecting workers,” said Susan Houseman, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich., who has done pioneering research in the field. “We have no idea how to measure the occupations being offshored or what is being inshored.”

Yeah, this is a tricky one because the government would literally have to account for every single import, how much it was bought for, etc. And there’s no way big business will go for that.

So it does indeed seem like our economic data has a big, gaping hole in it that is impossible to fill. But if we can’t point to the GDP as an accurate measure, which number do we point to? Employment and median wages seem to be the most obvious indicators since the more people are employed, the more likely they are to spend and the more our economy will flourish…given that it’s driven by consumer spending.

But maybe I’m missing something. What do you think the focus should be on if the GDP is a big boatload of nonsense?

In any event, one of the most talked about aspects of the House’s passage of the health care bill on Saturday was the last minute addition of a rather significant concession. Namely, a number of pro-life Democrats and a few moderate Republicans have been worried about Tea Party rhetoric about “ObamaCare Funding Abortion!” and the like, and so they demanded the inclusion of an amendment offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich) that reads simply:

(a) IN GENERAL.–No funds authorized or appropriated by this Act (or any amendment made by this Act) may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of pregnancy or incest.

Because the Democrats did not have enough votes to pass the bill without this small cadre of pro-lifers, the amendment was begrudgingly accepted, and we got our health care bill. Only now, of course, the people who fall into the public option safety net (i.e. the poor) will not be covered for elective abortions, as they would otherwise be in about 2/3s or private insurance plans and in some state Medicaid programs (though Medicaid federally is governed by a similar amendment, some states have bypassed that). Meaning, those most unable to care for an unwanted child and most likely to fall into that position will have to go out of pocket if they desire the procedure. And many fear that private insurers, now competing with the public option, will also have incentive to drop coverage of abortion.

Now presumably the people insured through the public option are currently uninsured, so one could argue that, as far as abortion is concerned, this is just the status quo. It is unclear how all of this would iron out in practice, as it is unclear whether the amendment even survives the Senate. Pro-choice progressives are livid, and with good reason. It’s bad law, if you ask me. Abortion is a legal medical procedure, and whether or not it is covered should be decided on a contextual, ideally case-by-case basis, a question to be settled between individual doctors, patients, and insurance boards (or whoever ultimately administers the public option), rather than a dozen or so Blue Dog Democrats in 2009. It should, in short, be decided on medical rather than political grounds. Liberals are right to cry foul in that regard.

But here’s the irony: the central argument against the public option in the first place is precisely what is being illustrated by the Stupak amendment. Namely, people will lose coverage (as will happen if private insurers drop abortion coverage, and in the case of those who go from private insurance or Medicaid in certain cases to the public option) and freedom of choice. You put medical decisions in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians rather than doctors and patients.

As William Salaten explains:

Welcome to socialism.

I don’t mean to exaggerate the House and Senate bills. They don’t nationalize medicine or set up a single-payer system. As socialism goes, they’re modest. But they do mandate, standardize, and subsidize health insurance. They mix public with private. And when you do that, you invite public-sector problems into matters that used to be nobody’s business.

One of these problems is that people don’t like their tax money being used for procedures that offend them. You may think that’s stupid. You may point out that your tax money is used for wars you don’t like. But you don’t have two or three dozen swing votes in the House. Pro-life Democrats do. They don’t have the clout to ban abortion, but they have the clout to keep tax money from paying for it.

Until health care reform came along, this wasn’t your problem. It was a problem for women who depended on public programs like Medicaid. But you wanted a better world. You wanted health insurance for everyone, and you wanted the government to help pay for it. Congratulations. You’ve brought the tax moralists into your life.

That goes both ways of course. It’s amazing to me that the same people who have been mewling about the loss of freedom that will occur under this health care plan are suddenly a-okay with taking away that freedom in the case of medical procedures that happens to offend them. And it’s not just abortion—those same social conservatives have pushed for the inclusion of language that may cover Christian Science prayer treatments. So, as has often been the case with Republican defenders-of-the-markets, freedom of choice is fine and dandy as long as it is, according to their morals, the right choice.

But liberals too need to understand that, when you put decisions like what kind of medical care is insured under the purview of a central, political authority, you will get central, political decisions. I have a number of hardcore progressives who comment at my blog, and one of the things that always leaves me befuddled is what often seems to be the central underpinning of their political worldview: namely, to centralize authority and instill regulations because people cannot be trusted. The inherent contradiction, of course, is the people who will be creating, manning, and administering said central authority are, of course, people too, prone to the same mistakes, errors in judgments, and corruptions as anyone else (only with more incentive to do so, because they have more power to parlay with). Or, to put that another way, the sort of Democrats who believe everything would be working just fine if the government were only staffed by 100% progressive liberals with everybody’s best interests at heart (good luck with that guys). The “representative democracy is great when everybody agrees with me” approach to governance. In this case, Democrats love the idea of a government-run health care program, because it never seems to occur to them that this same government-run health care program will also be run by conservatives—who make, on average, about half of government, and probably always will. So literally the first decision made by the new liberal health care paradigm is a social conservative one. News flash: that’s not a problem with social conservatism, it’s a problem with the mechanism that allows social conservatives to push their agenda on private citizens in an area they were previously kept out of because it was a market issue.

Salaten is right. The most fundamental criticism of government-run health care is perfectly illustrated in this case. Liberals have (or soon will) the central government-run health care system they wanted, and suddenly cry foul when that system takes a freedom away from individuals who had it in the market. And conservatives want to keep government out of health care—but by the way, now that we’re in it, can we outlaw abortion?

I’m against the amendment, and more-or-less for this health care reform, but in my view, both sides are getting what they deserve on this one.

Too bad it’s the public option patients who will suffer for it.

This article has multiple issues.

No kidding.

Let’s start at the beginning:

Is corporatocracy a far-left conspiracy theory or is it that government of the people, for the people and by the people perishing from the earth?

It’s hard to say – literally, corporatocracy is a hard word to write and say.

It occurs to me that a certain segment of the population has a large bullhorn and is gearing up for a civil war.

Their fears are justified. But is the enemy who they think it is?

I think the answer lies in the “multiple issues” that need to be worked out in the corporatocracy section of Wikipedia.

Now, if we can figure out how to say it, maybe we can talk about it.

Also, do check out some of the other categories, as there are many great blogs (and bloggers) that are nominated every year.

142,817 VOTES FOR BLOOMBERG ON COLUMN C DELIVERS MARGIN TO CITY’S FIRST INDEPENDENT MAYOR

New York, NY-The Independence Party vote for Mike Bloomberg yesterday broke numerous records and re-enforced its ongoing mandate for independent governance and non-partisan reform.

Unofficial returns released by the Board of Elections put the IP total on Column “C” at 142,817 votes, nearly 26% of Bloomberg’s total and 13% of all votes cast. This means that 1 in 4 Bloomberg voters chose to vote on the Independence Party line.

The vote for the mayor on the Independence Party line was an increase of 91% over its total four years ago, when it drew nearly 75,000 votes on its crucial Column “C”.

Jacqueline Salit, who has run all three IP campaigns for Bloomberg stated:

“The Independence Party’s 143,000 votes grows out of the strength of our grassroots organization, the popularity of political independence as a new option and a longstanding partnership with our independent mayor, Mike Bloomberg. This record breaking vote makes plain our growth and our role in the emerging shift in New York City politics. We’re a new kind of minor party with an agenda for non-partisan reform. We have a broad and diverse base of support. We gave Mike his margin in a close race. And we made history by electing the city’s first independent mayor.”

In three consecutive elections, under varying circumstances, the Independence Party has made its mark on the NYC mayoral. In 2001, its 59,091 votes gave Bloomberg his margin over Democrat Mark Green, who lost by 35,000 votes. In 2005, the IP vote for Bloomberg grew by 26%, making it the only political party to demonstrate growth at the polls that year. This year, the IP delivered 13% of the total  votes cast- the largest percentage ever-by a minor party for a cross-endorsed mayoral candidate.

For the last 20 years, other minor parties polled between 32,551 (the Working Families Party vote for Mark Green in 2001) and 62,469 (the Liberal Party vote for Rudy Giuliani in 1993).

Cross-posted on The Hankster