On Mar 20, 2013, at 2:12 PM, Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
Today’s Left is anti-growth, but I am pro-growth. The Left is against measurement of economic growth, I am for measurement of economic growth. So really I don’t have much in common with the Left anymore in that regard. I am a bit oldfashioned I guess. I believe that if you want to distribute goods, you have to produce them first, and you have to earn what you consume.
If you want to "measure economic growth" you first have to define growth. GDP is in no way a measure of growth because it is a GROSS measure that includes elements that constitute *negative* growth like depreciation of useful objects and emergency repair of catastrophic damages (oil spills, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.) Growth can only be measured on a NET basis, and that means accounting for the change in the stock of preconditions for economic production--which includes not only, not even mainly, the stock of productive assets ("physical capital"). What is crucial is the environmental and resource base. Consumption of any resource (soil, water, minerals) is negative growth that is to be deducted from measured physical output. And environmental damage (the CO2 buildup, for instance) of all sorts is likewise, perhaps even to a much greater greater extent, negative growth. Official National Accounts statistics purporting to measure net output exclude all these crucial factors (except the trivial case of claimed depreciation of privately-owned capital assets) and so are completely useless as measures of economic growth. What they measure is economic activity, much of which is either useless or destructive.
The left is pro-growth--it just conceives growth accurately, in direct contrast to official standards.
Shane Mage "All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr, 90
_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
