Tag Archives: digression
The Optimum Proportionate Flow Condition
To repeat in another way a point discussed earlier, there is an achievable optimum flow of money through the aggregate income (wages plus social welfare) channel in relation to the flow through other channels. The optimum state is characterised in two ways: (i) full employment, that is no involuntary employment of able people, prevails; (ii) economic activity, the wealth throughput rate, is at the maximum possible within the constraints imposed by other factors. … Read more
Digression: Caution about “Increases” and “Decreases”
These increases or decreases, it must be emphasised, would be not necessarily absolute, but relative to what real wages would have been, depending on other variables, if the money wage change had not taken place. It is necessary to be reminded constantly that we are dealing with an array of interdependent dynamic variables. … Read more
Digression: “So Long As We Profit, Costs Elsewhere Aren’t Our Problem”?
A fault of flat earth economics as practiced in free enterprise economies is that it chops a nation’s economy into sections that are too often treated as being self-contained and independent of other sections. This is not a useful or realistic view. … Read more
Digression: Pollution Red Herrings
Litter “Pollution”: A misleading idea, started when environmental awareness really took off world-wide in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, is that “pollution” means “litter” and that preventing litter means doing all that’s necessary to prevent pollution and protect the environment. … Read more
Notes on Evolution Not Revolution
First, it will be noted that things that common sense tells us are always good, such as efficient government or nuclear disarmament, or always bad, such as strikes or cartels, may actually be bed sometimes and good other times depending on the circumstances. … Read more
Foreword
When dealing with economics, we are confronted by a large array of interdependent static and dynamic variables. A change in one effects changes in all, which in turn affect the variable first changed, through its interdependence with the rest.
Cybernetics is perhaps most appropriate for the treatment of economic matters. … Read more
Budget Balancing Methods – Cost or Gain?
Measures to reduce expenditure and increase revenue raising by governments will often be seen in current economic terms as “costs” to the nation. But if seen in the light of the ideas put forward in the post about “Costs – What Really Costs Us and What Doesn’t?” they are economic gains. … Read more
Digression: Other Comments on Statements in UN Report
This digression makes two further comments on the statement on weapons versus other expenditure in the UN report mentioned above. One may return to this post later and go straight on to the post “Discussion of Costs Resumed”, if desired.
The UN report statement also implies agreement with the conventional idea that economic activity is a process of accumulation of wealth. … Read more
“Costs” – What Really Costs Us and What Doesn’t?
A new definition of costs is also required. The term at present is muddled and confused in general usage.
Wealth loss versus Throughput Reduction
Any outlay of money in a national economy is regarded as a “cost” to the nation in the sense of some loss of wealth. … Read more
Digression: Renewal and Recycling of Resources; Wages and Jobs
It is possible for some time to consume a resource faster than its renewal rate, just as a business can for some time consume its accumulated money capital faster than it takes money in (this is only an illustration and does not confuse money with wealth). … Read more