This is a very peculiar conversation to me, especially given that it's happening among a bunch of Marxists. From Marx's perspective, it would seem to me obvious that the growth that matters is growth in the net product per year IE gross output- depreciation costs. from this perspective our economy has been shrinking because we are keeping gross output growing by reducing stocks of wealth (ie natural resources) and thus reducing our ability to produce output in the future. in other words our planet is being liquidated. I don't think anyone would call a liquidation of stocks of assets income. From this point of view, the goal is to stop our economy from shrinking further and perhaps actually start growing.
by the way: GDP was not invented to be a measure of human welfare. it was invented to measure financial flows and understand the interrelated balance sheets of economic sectors. it's quite good at that. It's inventors in fact warned against using it as such. -- -Nathan Tankus ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
