manufacturing activity, up 4.5 percent, the first increase after seven consecutive quarters of decline
So Manufacturing went down, and now it's back up again. Right where it was before, if you judge it on the aggregate figures.
A key point about the Austrian school of economics, as championed by the Mises Institute Blog, is that during this time, the "dead wood" has been flushed out and the new manufacturing consists of more realistic, more (economically) sustainable ventures. None of the data i have seen shows any indication of whether or not, and if so to what extent, that has happened.
I now add on to my statistical wishlist, some sort of dataset that compares - for individual factories or companies - how much their level of activity changed from the peak to the trough, with how much their level of activity changed from the trough to the recovery.
If there is a very strong negative correlation in this data, it would mean that using aggregate figures for economic activity is perfectly fine, as the economy is doing the same thing as before. If the correlation is not that strong, it would mean that the economy is doing the same amount of activity, but to an extent it is doing different activity - that unsustainable activities were reduced and substituted by better ones, that the economy is in a better position than before, that there are merits to the claims of the Austrian school of thought.
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