Digging through a large pile of unread and unanswered e-mail, finally (finally!) I get to some ancient history, by web standards:
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 [!!], Sandwichman wrote: > ... The argument is about whether GDP remains a useful measure of what it > is intended to measure. You and I agree, I believe, that GDP isn't intended > to measure utility or national welfare. I think we also agree that it is > intended to measure market transactions. Right. It's an imperfect measure of aggregate exchange-value. Under capitalism, because we live under a system of commodity production and profit-seeking, it is highly related to the availability of jobs (all else constant). So even though GDP is often quite gross and conceals more than it reveals about utility or national welfare, most people are dependent on it for their livelihoods and even survival. > I would go one step further -- and here is where we may disagree -- to say > that GDP is intended to measure something like "real" transactions .... > If you and I share a car and every time I take > it out I pay you the value of the car, $1000, then you pay me the value of > the car when you take and the car changes hands three or four times a week, > all those transactions don't count in GDP. Hirsch's argument is that there > are intermediate goods and services whose only purpose is to gain an > advantage in the competition for other, "scarce" or "congested" goods. These > intermediate goods and services do count in GDP, even though they don't add > to the supply of the scarce or congested goods (or at least not much). A new point! You've never mentioned this (as far as I know), but it's interesting. I even though GDP measures tries to exchange-value, it does not discriminate between productive and unproductive expenditures. I've been skeptical about this concept for a long time, but I've also been willing to say that positional expenditures are "unproductive," i.e., profitable for individual capitalists (else they wouldn't happen) but not productive of surplus-value (which is what "productive" is about). The problem of course, is that one capital's unproductive spending is canceled out by another capital's, so that aggregate profit (surplus-value) is not improved. Of course, unproductive expenditure involves hiring unproductive labor-power. If we ban such unproductive expenditure, what are going to do about the resulting unemployment? Fiscal policy? > You may say, "so what, they still generate profits for business." But I say > they don't have the same characteristics as final consumption goods and > services. Right. Of course, a lot of consumption goods are also positional goods, as when Smith buys a large-screen TV to keep up with Jones. (Calling Dr. Duesenberry! STAT!) In any event, I never advocated the use of GDP as a measure of what's good for consumers (or of use-value, however defined). So that point is irrelevant to what I was saying (summarized in my first paragraph, above). > They depend for their demand not only on the total volume of > aggregate demand but also on a particular illusion about "the way the world > is" and how to get on in it. By itself, fiscal stimulus may raise the level > of aggregate demand but it doesn't reinstate the previously prevailing > illusion. That's all I'm saying. IHMO, the problem is not just an "illusion." It's capitalism, which in turn depends on such illusions (commodity fetishism, etc.) for its legitimacy. The fiscal stimulus may save capitalism (for the next time), but IMHO it's better to save capitalism than to make working people totally miserable for a decade or so. This is especially true since the "the worse, the better" vision is totally bogus. People could actually take this tea-bagging crap seriously, eventually getting into scapegoating "illegal aliens," sexual "deviants," and Canadians. > More abstractly what I'm saying is that "economic demand" cannot be reduced > to a mechanical and quantitative thing because it is also subjective and > cultural. A mechanical, quantitative policy response to a crisis will not > work, otherwise there wouldn't have been a crisis. This is completely new but it really doesn't seem to say anything substantive. Maybe it does. Please explain. You seem to change the argument all the time, Tom. My father used to do that -- it's a skill he learned from the Jesuits. Did you go to a Jesuit school? Even though I work at one, I am not really familiar with their flavor of thinking. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
