With the Administration and private attention fixed on the economy, maybe it's time to reexamine a key indicator to financial health - the Gross National Product. For years, a small band of thinkers have argued that the way the GNP is calculated is the real problem, and I agree. Because we live and die on the altar of economic totems like GNP, we worship in ignorant bliss.

Here's the basic dilemma: Say your name is Ned and the GNP stands for Gross Ned Product. You work at the local coal mine, and they pay really well. Of course you can only mine coal for a while before you get black-lung disease and retire permanently. Then there'll be medical bills. So the extra good pay is for using up your lungs, which you can only do one time. Those lungs are your own private, nonrenewable resource - like coal, oil, clean air and water, old growth forests, and even those damned spotted owls.

If Ned calculates his GNP only by considering his income, he looks in pretty good shape until he gets sick, then the medical bills wipe out his savings, and he can't work anymore. The Gross National Product figures things much the same as the Gross Ned Product. It looks at our gross product without subtracting for the one-time depletion of the irreplaceable resources necessary to create those products. Nothing in the figures leavens the GNP with a long-range consideration of how much stuff you're using up that's nonrenewable.

Experts have argued that the GNP is far from the only figure needed to measure the economy. Among the experts are Claremont College theologian John Cobb, his son Clifford, and the World Bank's Herman Daly. They've gone as far as to create another index, first published as an appendix in the 1989 book "For The Common Good". They call it their "the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare" (ISEW). It offers a different assessment of our economic world. Some major factors ignored by the GNP but part of the ISEW, according to Clifford Cobb, include;

• Distribution of income. New dollars to the rich add less towards ISEW than do new dollars to the poor.
• Lower ISEW for nonrenewable depletion of resources that account for permanent losses.
• International borrowing is subtracted from ISEW.
• Factor unpaid household work and child-rearing into the ISEW figures.
• Adjust ISEW downwards for military spending and weapon programs.
• Adjust ISEW upwards for government spending done on infrastructure; repairs to bridges, streets, sewers etc.

Clearly, as Clifford Cobb says, "With the ISEW, you can measure quality of life better than with the GNP. The ISEW tries to measures how well off we are, not how fast the wheels are spinning. We've known for years that many things are left out of the GNP, but few attempts have been made to address this issue. Measures of economic activity are vital: In practice, policy makers use the GNP numbers as a measure of welfare and base decisions on them. The mindset develops wherein people ignore what the numbers really represent.

What the Cobbs, and others who advocate sustainable economic growth, have found conforms to our most common experience: We are not always better off if GNP rises. Changing our overreliance on the GNP calculation would put the issue before us every day and make common sense out of calls for conservation and perspective.

Would you drive a car with no odometer, with no thought to the fuel consumed? Today's GNP calculation is like a gas gauge with no associated mileage reading. Isn't it time to start figuring out how many miles we're getting to the gallon instead of just how much fuel we've burned? It might just tell us how far we can go