The Compleat Growthman

“Growthmanship” is the name accorded a strange game of statistical roulette, in which American prestige and free world morale are the stakes. It consists of comparing percentage gains in the gross national product of the Soviet Union and the United States, and invariably ends by finding that the USSR has much the higher growth rate. The growthmen conclude that we are in grave danger of becoming a second-rate power.

There are several reasons for rejecting this line of argument. One is that it commits the elementary error of comparing a percentage derived from a small base with another derived from a large base; a second is that Soviet statistics, as even the Soviets themselves have acknowledged, are of doubtful reliability, and unquestionably exaggerated in Moscow’s favor; a third is that, with the Soviet government in charge of the entire economy, there can be no rational distribution of resources: aggregate statistics of “growth” may indicate that certain goods are produced; they cannot tell us whether the production takes place in areas where, for reasons of economic health, goods should be produced.

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M. Stanton Evans

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“Growthmanship” is the name accorded a strange game of statistical roulette, in which American prestige and free world morale are the stakes. It consists of comparing percentage gains in the gross national product of the Soviet Union and the United States, and invariably ends by finding that the USSR has much the higher growth rate. The growthmen conclude that we are in grave danger of becoming a second-rate power.

There are several reasons for rejecting this line of argument. One is that it commits the elementary error of comparing a percentage derived from a small base with another derived from a large base; a second is that Soviet statistics, as even the Soviets themselves have acknowledged, are of doubtful reliability, and unquestionably exaggerated in Moscow’s favor; a third is that, with the Soviet government in charge of the entire economy, there can be no rational distribution of resources: aggregate statistics of “growth” may indicate that certain goods are produced; they cannot tell us whether the production takes place in areas where, for reasons of economic health, goods should be produced.