qman said:

What about arresting drug users and putting them through the criminal justice system and then incarcerating them for 10 years?

I mean all of that does contribute to GDP, but does it really have any value?

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paperbackwriter said:

qman said:

What about arresting drug users and putting them through the criminal justice system and then incarcerating them for 10 years?

I mean all of that does contribute to GDP, but does it really have any value?

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I haven't been following this thread much as a lot of it is over my head.

But isn't value subjective?  In this case are we asking if this has a value to society as a whole?  Clearly it's valuable to for-profit prison institutions and the politicians/judges/police they employ.

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amp244 said:

Quote:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

amp244 said:

I guess you can't blame poor people for being stupid, but lending institutions still thought that the number of defaults would be manageable.

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I agree with you here, except the lending institutions offloaded their loans.

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understood, but they still would want their product to be marketable. They were still seeking continued operations.

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qman said:

Fal is against income and wealth inequality, but every time we point out the polices that produce that outcome, he defends it claiming it "saved the economy and avoided a depression".  He can't have it both ways, either one supports the policies and their outcomes or they don't.

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qman said:

amp244 said:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

amp244 said:

Newly constructed houses are added to GDP when they are built and first sold. The construction costs as well as the gain made on the sale by whatever firm sold it are added to GDP up front. I can understand that interest on the mortgage should be counted as it is paid, but counting the mortgage payments on the principal is double accounting.

GDP should measure goods or services that are produced. An increase in home ownership in and of itself does not necessarily mean anything NEW has been produced. Unless I buy a newly constructed house, nothing, save for the interest on my loan, realty fees, appraisals, etc. should be included into GDP. Houses are not considered consumption goods/services like rent, they are investments. You should not be able to count them over and over again every-time they are sold. Lets say I buy a new house and pay off the mortgage (it has already been doubly accounted for). Then I sell it to Hostile Universe, who took a home loan to buy it. Now his mortgage payments are being used to triply account for the same product! If the house continues to be sold, it could be accounted for even more times!

So to answer your question on whether growing home ownership is good, bad, or neutral on the economy, I would submit a qualified answer. Neutral if the houses are used, good if the houses are new.

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I agree with what you're saying; I was just explaining to qman/hostileuniverse why it's done that way.

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Yea I was just saying that it shouldn't be done this way. When the same product can be counted 3 times in the GDP, your GDP isn't exactly realistic information.

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What about the quality of GDP, is performing a $500k surgery for a unjustified operation on a 80 year old productive?

What about arresting drug users and putting them through the criminal justice system and then incarcerating them for 10 years?

I mean all of that does contribute to GDP, but does it really have any value?

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qman said:

paperbackwriter said:

qman said:

What about arresting drug users and putting them through the criminal justice system and then incarcerating them for 10 years?

I mean all of that does contribute to GDP, but does it really have any value?

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I haven't been following this thread much as a lot of it is over my head.

But isn't value subjective?  In this case are we asking if this has a value to society as a whole?  Clearly it's valuable to for-profit prison institutions and the politicians/judges/police they employ.

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Well, it's the same argument when an illegal comes into the US and then gets arrested and goes through the criminal justice system, YES that adds to GDP and the people that promote this agenda never quantity the quality of this GDP.

I could break the windows of 20 cars tonight and they will all need to be repaired, and that will also add to GDP as well, was any utility created?  No.

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amp244 said:

In the case of the broken window, you are simply diverting wealth from one area to the other. Sure the window company makes money, but the man who's window you broke can't buy that coat he always wanted and the coat company loses a sale. Some people don't see the logical fallacy in the broken window example, and argue that it stimulates the economy. I find the same to be true in regards to post-war rebuilding. People point to all the houses and infrastructure building that is now putting people to work, but they fail to realize that all of this money could have, and surely would have, been spent elsewhere.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

amp244 said:

In the case of the broken window, you are simply diverting wealth from one area to the other. Sure the window company makes money, but the man who's window you broke can't buy that coat he always wanted and the coat company loses a sale. Some people don't see the logical fallacy in the broken window example, and argue that it stimulates the economy. I find the same to be true in regards to post-war rebuilding. People point to all the houses and infrastructure building that is now putting people to work, but they fail to realize that all of this money could have, and surely would have, been spent elsewhere.

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Bigbadwooof said:

...as technology progresses, we are going to have less and less jobs.

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Bigbadwooof said:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

amp244 said:

In the case of the broken window, you are simply diverting wealth from one area to the other. Sure the window company makes money, but the man who's window you broke can't buy that coat he always wanted and the coat company loses a sale. Some people don't see the logical fallacy in the broken window example, and argue that it stimulates the economy. I find the same to be true in regards to post-war rebuilding. People point to all the houses and infrastructure building that is now putting people to work, but they fail to realize that all of this money could have, and surely would have, been spent elsewhere.

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This is true, but as technology progresses, we are going to have less and less jobs. At some point we will either have to agree to stop technological progress, kill off a significant portion of society, break windows to make jobs, or embrace Socialism and spread the fruits of our collective progress as a species.

As the labor market loses more and more slack, the middle class and the poor lose their place, and their grip on any meaningful share of tye economic pie.

In fact, I believe that there have been technological advancements which have been stifled in order to preserve the power structure, or even to preserve jobs, as it is. A couple years ago I read about a mouthwash that was in stage 2 clinical trials with the FDA, which would literally eliminate tooth decay by targetting the specific bacteria which cause tooth decay, and allowing benign bacteria to flourish and overtake the habitat (your mouth). As amateur mycologists, I'm sure we all have some level of understanding of how this works. It has been years now, and I have to literally dig deep to even find any information about it anymore. I feel like the American Dental Association killed it, because it was a job killer. Some of the best jobs in the country, I might add.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

Bigbadwooof said:

...as technology progresses, we are going to have less and less jobs.

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They (whoever 'they' is) have been saying this since the robot 'Elektro' was introduced at the 1939 World Fair.  The pitch was that robots would soon cut American's work week in half.  Interestingly, people are still working as much today as they ever have.  I'm not sure if/when we'll see a loss in jobs due to automation, but to combat this Government would simply need to reduce the work week from 40 hours to a lower number.

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amp244 said:

I think the notion that technological advancements have a negative effect on net jobs is yet another logical fallacy.

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Quote:

The other premise is that it is possible for long-term difficulty to arise that has nothing to do with any lump of labour. In this view, the amount of work that can exist is infinite, but (1) machines can do most of the "easy" work, (2) the definition of what is "easy" expands as information technology progresses, and (3) the work that lies beyond "easy" (the work that requires more skill, talent, knowledge, and insightful connections between pieces of knowledge) may require greater cognitive faculties than most humans are able to supply, as point 2 continually advances. This latter view is the one supported by most modern advocates of the possibility of long-term, systemic technological unemployment.

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amp244 said:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

I'm not sure if/when we'll see a loss in jobs due to automation, but to combat this Government would simply need to reduce the work week from 40 hours to a lower number.

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I don't think reducing the work week will do anything positive for the economy at large. There will be no increase in man-hours or production.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

Bigbadwooof said:

...as technology progresses, we are going to have less and less jobs.

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They (whoever 'they' is) have been saying this since the robot 'Elektro' was introduced at the 1939 World Fair.  The pitch was that robots would soon cut American's work week in half.  Interestingly, people are still working as much today as they ever have.  I'm not sure if/when we'll see a loss in jobs due to automation, but to combat this Government would simply need to reduce the work week from 40 hours to a lower number.

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paperbackwriter said:

Technology has been taking jobs for as long as we've had capitalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment

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And technology has been also been creating jobs for as long as we've had capitalism.  I work in the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley, an industry that never even existed 30 years ago.  The long term unemployment rate hasn't gone down much as a result of technology yet, though I wouldn't be surprised if it happens someday.

amp244 said:

Bigbadwooof said:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

amp244 said:

In the case of the broken window, you are simply diverting wealth from one area to the other. Sure the window company makes money, but the man who's window you broke can't buy that coat he always wanted and the coat company loses a sale. Some people don't see the logical fallacy in the broken window example, and argue that it stimulates the economy. I find the same to be true in regards to post-war rebuilding. People point to all the houses and infrastructure building that is now putting people to work, but they fail to realize that all of this money could have, and surely would have, been spent elsewhere.

---

---

This is true, but as technology progresses, we are going to have less and less jobs. At some point we will either have to agree to stop technological progress, kill off a significant portion of society, break windows to make jobs, or embrace Socialism and spread the fruits of our collective progress as a species.

As the labor market loses more and more slack, the middle class and the poor lose their place, and their grip on any meaningful share of tye economic pie.

In fact, I believe that there have been technological advancements which have been stifled in order to preserve the power structure, or even to preserve jobs, as it is. A couple years ago I read about a mouthwash that was in stage 2 clinical trials with the FDA, which would literally eliminate tooth decay by targetting the specific bacteria which cause tooth decay, and allowing benign bacteria to flourish and overtake the habitat (your mouth). As amateur mycologists, I'm sure we all have some level of understanding of how this works. It has been years now, and I have to literally dig deep to even find any information about it anymore. I feel like the American Dental Association killed it, because it was a job killer. Some of the best jobs in the country, I might add.

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I think the notion that technological advancements have a negative effect on net jobs is yet another logical fallacy. This argument has been made all throughout history and been proven false, but has never died. Why should goods be carried from New York to London by cargo ship, when a much greater number of men could be employed transporting it by row-boat? The fallacy lies in simply focusing on the workers within whatever industry that machinery/technology is introduced. You ignore the people who are employed designing and building the new machines. Furthermore you are neglecting to take into account the benefit to COGS that this technology may produce, which in most instances gets transferred to the consumer through lower prices, for he now has more money to spend elsewhere.

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Quote:

amp244 said:

As a matter of fact it could be argued that production efficiencies will diminish due to unskilled labor entering the workforce.

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I don't follow this argument at all.  Why would reducing people's work week from 40 hours to a lower number (say 30 hours) increase the amount of unskilled labor??? You'd still need both skilled and unskilled labor, just less of each.

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Quote:

amp244 said:

The only thing that will happen is that the workers previously employed will be subsidizing the newly employed workers, and I don't like socialism.

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I don't get it again.  Are you saying you'd rather have 25% of the existing workforce be unemployed rather than having the existing workforce only working 75% of their current hours?  Because... socialism?

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