simon kuznets was called in to direct the government study.d been working on income estimates for the national bureau of economic research. the lack of information about the economy was, in kuznets' words "a scandal." the data were "neither fish nor flesh nor even red herring." kuznets found he would be working with economist robert nathan one of his former students. he had me measuring things for which we didn't have direct data. we never had a service census, a retail census, or a construction census. the result was there were a lot of gaps. that made it tough. but conceptually simon gave it a degree of depth and, measurementwise a degree of reality that never had prevailed before. one of kuznets' basic concepts was to limit measurements to the marketplace. the amount people paid for goods and services measured consumption. the money spent on new production facilities and equipment gave a total for investments. the problem was to avoid double counting as payments flowed through the economic system. take an automobile. the iron mine operator