On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 3:14 PM, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This critique doesn't apply to me; I do not "attach a > disproportionate amount of importance to" real GDP. (What would be the > "proportionate" amount of importance, by the way?)
For an advanced industrial society, a proportionate amount of importance is little to none. GDP would be useful to sociologists to study how much of social activity is mediated by market mechanisms. I can't think of any other use for it. > The _only_ reason to increase real GDP is that we live in a capitalist > economy in which the availability of jobs is hooked to the real GDP. > In case you haven't noticed, most people's livelihoods are mostly > dependent on the health of the capitalist economy. We have no choice > but to live within the belly of the beast. I disagree. Why is unemployment necessarily hooked to GDP growth? If for instance, the city of Los Angeles were to build an extensive public transit system, GDP would likely decrease because of fewer automobiles, commuters, gasoline consumption etc, but employment might very well increase because of the workforce required to maintain and operate the transit system. And this is all entirely within the framework of the capitalist economy. If our concern is with unemployment why bother with a proxy like GDP, when unemployment can be measured and monitored directly (even if imperfectly). > from the start of raghu's letter: >>You cannot win this argument until you produce an alternative variable to GDP >>growth.< > > It's not my job to actually produce such an alternative. Since GDP is > such a good measure of the capitalist pulse, this job will likely be > left to a socialist society to do. Then, it will be democratic > decisions that will be behind its construction (as I sketched before). > I can suggest some ideas (as I did) but I can't produce such an > alternative. I have a better idea: how about we get over this notion that progress can be measured in one single statistic that is supposed to be a monotonically increasing function of time, and instead embrace the complexity of the world as it is? -raghu. -- milli-helen : The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
