Hacker News Reader

Comment by temp99990 | Hacker News Reader

I wish we tracked suicide rates and drug ODs as a nation like we track GDP.

Businesses use tension metrics to make sure that their primary KPIs are still working, like new users signed up vs user retention after 180 days (to prevent the marketing department from going all in on unsustainable user “growth”).

Perhaps we should do the same with GDP, since as income inequality grows it can continue to grow while suffering increases

We don't?

They are tracked but aren’t a “first class” statistic like GDP is as far as measuring the “health” of a nation is concerned.

I think the issue you are pointing at is that you want people to care more about these kinds of statistics, and less about GDP. That's a very different and much harder problem to solve than the one implied by you first post (that we don't measure them in the first place).

My wording is confusing. I’m aware these are tracked.

When one side is in power, they point to the metrics that make things seem great, and when out of power, they do the reverse.

Republicans in 2017 suddenly talked about how great stock returns / GDP / unemployment were doing when they spent 8 years saying they didn't reflect the true economy and the jobless rate was abominable. Now democrats are focusing on median income growth / GINI index / student loan default rates etc after saying everything was great for years. Statistics are just used as tools to accomplish policy goals and win arguments.

We do.

https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/resources.htm...

To add, the CDC does an amazing job of making the whole of mortality stats available with the fast take being at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm - they also do a weekly report

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Twitter feed is similarly fascinating: https://twitter.com/cdcmmwr

Reply on news.ycombinator.com