We live in a performance-oriented society. Because this is so, we like to measure things. The more we measure, we tell ourselves, the better we can assess our strengths and weaknesses. The more we do that, the better our performance will be. How could the Federal Reserve, for instance, know whether to tighten or loosen the money supply if it didn’t know the inflation rate or the unemployment rate? Remarkably, 80 years ago, at the time of the Great Depression, we didn’t collect statistics on either inflation or unemployment. Government officials, responsible for steering the economy, were flying blind.
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