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

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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.

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