No, it's not true that "real" (inflation-and deflation-corrected) values are an expression of use-value. "Real" values are an expression of exchange- value, not use-value. If one doesn't correct for the general level of prices, then a financial figure is arbitrary. Use-values, by way of contrast, cannot generally be expressed in financial terms.
For example, it's simply that not true that, comparing purchases that one has just made, that something one purchases for $100 necessarily has "10 times more" use-value than something one has bought for $10, or has infinitely more use-value than something that one has enjoyed without any cost at all. And, for example, the attempt to measure environmental-value by a financial figure is one of the things that's wrong with carbon trading and the carbon tax. --Joseph Green Shane Mage wrote: > > On Nov 9, 2009, at 2:44 PM, Jim Devine wrote: > > > me: > >> [no matter how it's corrected, GDP will continue to measure > >> exchange-value but not use-value.] > > > > Shane Mage wrote: > >> That's true of *nominal* GDP. But "real" GDP purports to measure > >> use-value.< > > > > it purports to, but it doesn't really. > > > > More accurately, its those who see raising real GDP as a goal who see > > it as somehow measuring "human welfare" (i.e., use-value). > > > Use-value should not be associated with human welfare. It is the > inseperable "heads" side of the coin "commodity" whose "tails" side is > exchange value. Human welfare means so much more than commodity > consumption that "use-values" play only a minor, though basic, part in > it. To state the commodity output of a given year in units expressing > how that output would have been valued by its users in some other year > (the meaning of real GDP) is to compare use-values. > > > > Shane Mage > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
