Oddities about measuring things

So I was talking about how we measure the economic growth of a country, and that under labour, compared to similar countries, we did pretty much the same.  And I suggested that politicians probably do very little to really influence these things, because if they did you'd expect a measurable jump in behaviour from one set of politicians to another, and it doesn't really happen.

And at that comment, a barrage of remarks came, initially that the long term good of labour will come in it's investments in things like primary schools and the NHS, and you can't measure things like how happy someone is.

Well if we can't measure it, what the hell are we doing?  We ought to stop spending money, give people back taxes and do nothing by that count.  There's no way to tell if it's a good or bad thing.

It's quite frustrating for me, especially as things like that come from professional scientists.  Our scientific predecessors remade the human experience, changed it beyond imagination to what it is today, and no small part through finding interesting, reliable and reproducible ways of measuring things.

And also, you can measure it - waiting lists, life expectancy, infection rate in hospitals, mortality rate in hospitals, ambulance waiting times, customer satisfaction surveys.  Which to choose, and how to combine them, is harder, but it's foolish to say we can't.

(Haven't seen any measure that says the NHS is much better after labour.  Which is confusing - they had something like a 20% of GDP per person increase on what was spent, and I can't really see shit is better.  And primary schools?  While a little important, surely the issue is a lot bigger than that?  But my "why labour were rubbish" post is in the future, when I have a little more time.  Couple of weeks)

Edit:  It was just the one guy, btw, just said a lot of things quickly