visagrunt wrote:
Of course it can be defined in an objective fashion. The question is whether any of those definitions are useful.
Per-capita GDP by PPP is an objective measure, and its growth progressive towards a more prosperous society.
Growth in a country's human development index is objective.
Improvements in a country's leading health indicators are objective.
National bureaux of statistics involve themselves in an ongoing exercise of counting, classifying and analysing, and political leaders use these data and analyses to evaluate the initiatives that they have taken and to predict the impact of initiatives that they are contemplating.
(1)But this objectivity--in the name of "evidence based policy making"-- is a bit of a canard, because there will always be the individual who is an outlier for whom any objective assessment is meaningless because nothing has actually been done to improve that person's subjective assessment of the quality of their own life.
Wonderful
(1) I agree but would like to add another case. some time a minority is objectively hurt by policy that benefits the majority. If the Tax burden was shifted for example the ultra-wealthy would quantitatively have less money.
_________________
?We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots??
http://jakobvirgil.blogspot.com/
17 Aug 2012, 10:11 am
