Systems of National Accounting and esp. the gross domestic product promise to deliver a yardstick for successful policies. But they also have some fundamental problems and biasses, especially in social and environmental terms, which already have been identified and are today well known. A new generation of (monetary and non-monetary) welfare indicators should remedy, e.g. Adjusted Net Savings or the Happy Planet Index. Starting with some general considerations about numbers in politics, I will discuss the question in how far these new indicators really escape the structural biasses of their predecessors.