Preach it, Brother Atrios. Something has happened to the public discourse in this country that has left us unable to talk about anything save in terms of quantifiable GDP benefits. If you want to sell more vacation time, better do it on grounds of productivity -- even though the actual reason is that it would be nice if people could take vacations. Want to sell environmentalism? Better do it based on the possible job creation benefits of green energy. Health care? Administrative efficiencies. High wages? Lower turnover. Flex time? Productivity, again.
There's no conversation over the optimal type of society, or public goods, or the benefits of leisure. You see this in our odd discussions over the French system, in which the French are inexplicably hamstringing their own economy, possibly in order to annoy us. You see this in the Right's schizophrenic approach to family values, where they know perfectly well that kids are shortchanged because businesses don't have to offer paid maternity leave, paid time off, flex-time, serious vacations, or a thousand other things that advantage the family, but they can't bring themselves to advocate for anything that would make a difference, because it's so damned difficult to advocate for anything that doesn't clearly increase GDP.
This isn't, incidentally, the fault of any individual economists; it's more the outsized respect we accord the profession, our cultural subservience to whatever we've been convinced the economy wants (more tax cuts!), and the capture of economic rhetoric and argument by right wingers. That, I think, is the elephant in the room here: It's not that the TV is filled with academic economists spouting off myopic platitudes. It's filled with business types and corporate flacks and industry shills who are very, very skilled at spinning basic economic concepts and perceived societal wisdom (government is inefficient!) to set the terms of the debate.
