While most of his proposals — «to abandon the gold
standard, let international exchange rates float, use federal surpluses and deficits as macroeconomic policy tools that could counter cyclical trends, and establish bureaus of
economic statistics (including a consumer price index) in order to facilitate this effort» — are now conventional practice, his critique of fractional - reserve banking still «remains outside the bounds of conventional wisdom» although a recent paper by the IMF reinvigorated his proposals.
Judged by the
standard GNP
statistics, the US per capita income had increased in real value by 25 per cent since 1976; but, using the ISEW, they found that over the same period the
economic wellbeing of Americans had actually declined by 10 per cent.