Switzerland has no official poverty statistics. So what?   This
article first appeared as “Warum es keine Armutsstatistik
braucht” in Schweizer Monatshefte, Issue 979, July/August 2010
In the early 1960s, Chicago economist Milton Friedman travelled
to Hong Kong to meet Sir John Cowperthwaite, the colony’s
Financial Secretary. The economic development of Hong Kong had
aroused Friedman's curiosity, but, to his surprise, he was
unable to get hold of any detailed economic statistics. So he
asked Sir John about the peculiar lack of data. Cowperthwaite, a
classical liberal economist, explained that he deliberately
refrained from having detailed economic data gathered. He argued
the bureaucrats of the colonial administration should not even
be tempted to intervene in the economy.  Cowperthwaite’s
approach may appear a bit eccentric, but it seems it was not to
Hong Kong’s detriment. According to estimates, the city’s income
per capita has increased tenfold in real terms over the past
half century. With that in mind,