Never in 35 years serving in senior posts at the BLS, BEA and Census did I encounter political meddling with our economic indicators. In the case of the United States, the Economist is dead wrong. More seriously, I believe that by most criteria US economic indicators meet or exceed reasonable criteria for timeliness and also meet those criteria for reliably measuring short-term economic change. This, however, is quite different from saying that our statistics are keeping pace with longer run forces shaping the US, indeed the world, economy. Our economies are changing faster than our ability to measure them.
Economic output is increasingly conceptual rather than physical.
The form of output and the means of production have been increasingly less physical and tangible, hence more difficult to measure. Alan Greenspan has calculated that US GDP today is only slightly higher measured in tons than several decades ago. The huge rise in real GDP since then is the result much more of ideas than exploitation and fabrication of physical resources. This trend is sure to continue into the 21st Century. The medical research that changed the nature of health care is only the beginning of a growing list of conceptual elements in our economic output.