M<em>ost people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.</em></p><p>&ndash; <em>Abe Lincoln</em></p><p>The latest gross domestic product numbers for the United States &mdash; showing 3.5 percent growth in the third quarter &mdash; are surely the light at the end of the recessionary tunnel.</p><p>Feel better?</p><p>Probably not. </p><p>You or somebody you know probably doesn&rsquo;t have a job or health insurance. People are losing their houses or are up to their chins in debt and not spending much. Parts of our education system remain in tatters. Our environment could be cleaner, our politicians and business leaders more honest.</p><p>I&rsquo;m not trying to ruin your day. But I am joining others in questioning the value of the GDP as the ultimate measure of the country&rsquo;s economic success.</p><p>In The Atlantic, Megan McArdle points out that the GDP &ldquo;counts the dollar value of our output but not the actual improvement in our lives.&rdquo;</p><p>She gives the example of a house. Its owner may have spent thousands to build it, boosting GDP. But if it was finished as the 2008 bubble burst, much of that output disappeared as housing values shrank. If the house never sold, its ultimate function was &ldquo;to bankrupt its owner.&rdquo;</p><p> In 2004, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development launched a project to come up with a better economic yardstick for countries. A commission set up by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and headed by Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has taken up the task. It met last week at a forum in Busan, South Korea.</p><p>The economic development organization&rsquo;s secretary-general, Angel Gurria, warned that people could lose confidence in markets and governments unless the world could agree on what&rsquo;s &ldquo;true progress.&rdquo;</p><p> The Sarkozy commission said it was looking at how to measure levels of freedom, security, contentment and economic and ecological sustainability.</p><p>You could say it&rsquo;s trying to come up with a &ldquo;Gross National Happiness&rdquo; index, which was suggested in the 1970s by the monarch of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck.</p><p>The commission apparently has no timetable. But it took U.S. government economists more than a decade, beginning in the early 1930s, to figure out basic GDP measurements. </p><p>If you&rsquo;re interested in a gauge that&rsquo;s up and running, check out the Legatum Institute&rsquo;s Prosperity Index at www.prosperity .com. The institute, an independent research arm of an investment fund based in Dubai that supports entrepreneurial and sustainable development, takes into account some of these softer measures.</p><p>The index is made up of nine blocks: economic fundamentals, entrepreneurship and innovation, democratic institutions, education, health, safety and security, governance, personal freedom and social capital.</p><p>Not a bad list. </p><p>In the 2009 index, the bottom-ranked country, at No. 104, is Zimbabwe. Pakistan, high on our radar screen, is 99th.</p><p>Finland is No. 1, followed by Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.</p><p>In the subcategories, the United States was No. 1 in entrepreneurship and innovation. Its worst showing: 27th in health.</p><p>Overall, it ranks ninth, just ahead of New Zealand.</p><p>A pretty good performance. I hope that improves your mood.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Bonus round No. 1</span></strong></p><p>The problem in formulating a new GDP brings to mind the Mark Twain saying, &ldquo;There are lies, damned lies and statistics.&rdquo; </p><p>In her Atlantic article, McArdle brings up the now-discredited 2000 ranking of health systems by the World Health Organization, in which the U.S. came in below such countries as Oman, Colombia and Morocco.