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Resolving the energy, environment, health care, urban, and other economic dilemmas that confront us as a nation requires that we increase our productivity, which is directly related to our growth in capital investment. But, the author of this article says, we have been doing exactly the opposite because we have been consuming our capital. It is not that we have lost our ability to produce but, rather, that we have neglected to take into account one fundamental fact of economic life today--inflation--in the way we measure what we are producing. As a result, corporations are paying out hard cash in taxes and in dividends on profits that do not exist. It is time, the author believes, to insist on two changes in the way we measure the costs of what we are producing in order to put an end to what amounts "to a mass financial rape of prudent people." INSET: How the CED sidestepped current cost depreciation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses regional economics in the mature industrial area of New England, in light of the region's declining share in the national economy. The economic health of New England appears good because of its population statistics and labor supply, personal income and labor productivity, and expansion in the growth industry of research. Topics include New England's population record, the region's advantage in foreign trade, comparison of regional and national per capita income as well as productivity in manufacturing industries, employment data for the tertiary occupations, regional wage differentials, and characteristics of the population, especially the socioeconomic aspects of the male labor force.