Deficit Financing
The plan which eventually became acceptable, more readily under pressure of the Second World War, was that of deficit spending, whereby the government deliberately set out to spend more than they received through taxes, duties, and charges. The gap could be filled by borrowing, thereby mobilising stagnant funds. … Read more
Real and Money Wages: Living Standards
Real wage and material living standard will be treated as different terms for the same variable.
The real wage, however, is not the same as the money wage. The real wage is the access to goods and services given to a worker in exchange for their labour. … Read more
Digression: Fast Breeder Nuclear Fission Reactors
This technology promises to expand the amount of fissionable fuel available from natural uranium by a factor of about 60, by “breeding” more fuel than it consumes. This doesn’t change the non-renewable nature of the total uranium resource, but it does promise to make it so abundant as to encourage a casual attitude towards energy conservation. … Read more
Hard Work – Virtue or Vice?
People working overtime for extra pay, or purchasing more goods more often, or performing any act that increases their rates of consumption, may justify themselves or be justified by governments or the media with the argument (consistent with current economic thinking) that by doing so they are boosting the economy, creating wealth, giving employment to people. … Read more
Digression: Depletion and Inflation
Throughput of resources, a first derivative of wealth, is of two kinds, gross and net. Net throughput is the flow of goods and services in the economy. Gross throughput is net throughput plus the resources required to extract and process wealth into these goods and services. … Read more
Visual and Noise Pollution
In terms of physically damaging, poisoning, or depleting the earth’s living environment, there are no such things as visual or noise pollution.
These are red herrings in the sense that, for example, people who object to the noise of rock music, traffic, or children at play, or object to the replacement of an ornamental old building by a stark new one, feel entitled to attach their cause to the environmental cause (feeling licensed by the use of the word “pollution” in describing what they object to), thereby distracting attention from issues of real importance to the living environment and diverting energy that should go into resolving those issues in the environment’s favour. … Read more
Environment versus Economic Progress
The fierce conflicts between conservationists on one side and workers, industrialists, and some politicians on the other arise from a misconception.
Both parties in fact desire the same goal – economic well-being. But the latter and many of the former believe that environmental conservation and economic progress are conflicting aims, between which a balance or compromise must be found. … Read more
Global Inequalities in Wealth
Another misconception held by many in both “rich” and “poor” countries is that the “rich” should go on making and using ever more goods and services, thereby “creating wealth” that can somehow find its way to the “poor” nations, making them “richer”. … Read more