--
--------- Forwarded Message ---------
| DATE: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:04:45 |
| From: "Gunnar Tomasson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |
| To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |
| Cc: |
Dear Michael:
First, let me note Krehm underscores the point which I raised at the outset of exchanges with Rodney Shakespeare on Gang8 some months ago:
The notion that everybody must become a capitalist is a morbid one. It stems, I believe, from the bizarre notion of the Binary Economics people that machinery itself produces wealth. It doesn’t.
In other words, Capital is not an independent Factor of Production -
hence Keynes's 'sympathy' for "the pre-classical doctrine that everything is produced by labour, aided by what used to be called art and is now called technique, by natural resources which are free or cost a rent according to their scarcity or abundance, and by the result of past labour, embodied in assets, which also command a price according to their scarcity or abundance. It is preferable," Keynes concluded, "to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur and his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective demand. This partly explains why we have been able to take the unit of labour as the sole physical unit which we require in our economic system, apart from units of money and of time." (General Theory, Ch. 16)
Now to your comments:
I thought the key was HOW the economic surplus was to be paid out: as stipulated and fixed interest payments, or as flexible earnings.
Could the latter reading be what was meant? If not, SHOULD it be what was meant?
As I see it, the very concept of such "economic surplus" cannot be divorced from the "bizarre notion of the Binary Economics people that machinery itself produces wealth."
For if "everything is produced by labour", then "economic surplus" cannot arise so long as "labour" receives a dollar's income for dollar's worth of labor.
So what the Binary Economics people must be talking about is an income transfer mechanism akin to the interest rate mechanism under contemporary monetary arrangements whereby the purchasing power of "a dollar's income for dollar's worth of labor" is diluted so that some may reap where they have not sown.
The social welfare system is such a mechanism and, since it "takes" from some and "gives" to others, people will hold different views on its adequacy or fairness.
Cloaking such differences in the jargon of Binary Economics serves no purpose.
Gunnar
----- Original Message -----From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 8:34 AMSubject: Re: [gang8] The Southwark dimensionDear Gunnar,
The paragraph you cite is indeed ambiguous.
But before I went on to your paragraph, I read it to mean that the state could use interest-free credit to create Public Enterprise, whose EARNINGS would become a flow of revenue potentially to "the people" (I guess this means the biggest campaign contributors, as today, or foreign creditors).
I thought the key was HOW the economic surplus was to be paid out: as stipulated and fixed interest payments, or as flexible earnings.
Could the latter reading be what was meant? If not, SHOULD it be what was meant?
Michael
The gang8 list is devoted to Creditary Economics.
To unsubscribe, email: gang8-unsubscribe @yahoogroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
| Yahoo! Groups Sponsor | |
| |
The gang8 list is devoted to Creditary Economics.
To unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
--------- End Forwarded Message ---------
____________________________________________________________
Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail!
Login To Lycos Mail
