On Wed, 2008-06-18 at 11:37 -0700, Sandwichman wrote: > On 6/18/08, Gar Lipow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My counter metaphor is that capitalism is not acromegaly, but simply > > adolescence. Many adolescents have huge appetites, often needing > > unbelievable amounts of food. They grow amazingly fast. They tend to > > flail around, often extremely destructively. A fair number of > > adolescents manage to exercise sufficiently bad judgment that they die > > of bad choices - for instance drunk driving. Whatever we mean by > > socialism, I don't think we mean that humanity should stop growing, > > merely that growing needs to include growing up. > > Economic growth is already a metaphor. Before seeking greater clarity > through specificity of the metaphor, it is useful to ask what the > semantic limits of the metaphor are. Just what is it that "grows"? And > in what sense is that growth "economic"? > > What grows are incomes and assets measured in dollars. Growth in > income and assets has traditionally been associated with something we > could call "prosperity" or "economic welfare," which are composed of > subjective experiences and are thus unquantifiable.
I wrote the following little story a while ago. I wonder if it is taught to econ students. Laurent http://guerby.org/blog/ """ The solution for GDP growth and the end of hunger It's as easy as having one 100 USD banknote in the whole country. How? I asked an innocent question on Yahoo http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AjWwgnpZBZwjnCvl9H0O3GUTxgt.?qid=20070404120530AACIvMp How to measure GDP in a simple setting? Assume that the economy has two people Alice and Bob, and no tax. Alice has 100 dollars. Some day during the year she asks Bob a question and Bob asks for 100 dollars for the answer. Alice pays 100 dollars to Bob and Bob answers. Another day during the same year, Bob asks a question to Alice and Alice asks for 100 dollars to answer. Bob pays 100 dollars to Alice and Alice answers the question. No other economic event happen in the economy during the year. My question: what is the yearly GDP of this economy as would be measured by current standards? Answer given: Simply put $200 heres why gdp is the total amount of all final goods and services produced in an economy each person produced $200 the second way to look at is by totaling all wages earned which is also $200 Which is $100 per person per year. Now let's assume all people in our poor country play this game: ask your neighbour a question ("what time is it") and the price is $100, with no tax applied (a "free" economy). At the end of the day, the $100 banknote has been in the successive hands of all the people of the country and goes back to its original owner. $100 per people of GDP has been produced this day. Do it 365 days a year, you have a GDP of 365*$100 = $36500. For reference France per capita GDP is $27600. So you just created a richer economy than France, and since you're rich, there's no longer any hunger problem. Right? France has also 72% of its GDP in the service activity. And remember that GDP as currently defined measures the speed of exchange of money. """ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
