Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Free Enterprise Produces The Want For Consumption

"What a country wants to make it richer is never consumption, but production.  Where there is the latter, we may be sure that there is no want of the former."

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

Isn't that interesting?  This sounds suspiciously like supply-side economics.

As we know that consumption makes up the better part of Gross Domestic Product (what a country produces in a year), and some say it's over 60%, how does that consumption come about unless there is something to consume?

So the question is, what is the best means of getting something to consume?

What kind of economies do it better?  Controlled economies or free-market economies?  It's the new/old debate all over again - socialism or capitalist free enterprise?

Look at history.  Look around the world.  How are the countries controlled by dictators and bureaucrat planners doing?  How has the U.S. been doing these past few years while sinking deeper and deeper into socialist planning? 

What does the future hold for growth, and investment?  What has made up a larger and larger portion of the GDP in the past few years?  Production (and therefore consumption) or gubment spending?

Even though productivity has been redefined by the gubment planners, and GDP has been redefined by the gubment planners, and unemployment has been redefined by the gubment planners, ad nauseum.

Why all the changes?  To rewrite history!  If history can be rewritten (and by history we mean back to 1929) then the current condition can be redefined!  It's simple!

GDP was never intended to measure the economy's well being, but since WWII that is pretty much how it has been used.  And the contents that go into it's measurement are a bit like a soup recipe.  But the soup recipe had not changed until the last couple of years!  Now new ingredients are being put into the soup!  But these are not substantial new things.  "They" want it to appear like real "investment."  But instead, it's a bit like adding smoke.  Better put - it's a bit like adding smoke and mirrors.  And to add to the fun, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

What's new in the GDP soup pot?  Such important criteria as adding Hollywood royalties, and revenues from scientific R&D.  Real investment, don'tchano!  You want to pump up GDP, how about a sugar high?  But the sugar high has to be redefined way back.  If not adding it now doesn't look right.  The economic GPS is being force to, um, recalculate.

But why the sugar?  To cover up the severe unemployment circumstance that is still anemic even though IT  has been redefined!  To paraphrase one economist, whose name sounds a bit like Shrugman, we are creating a permanent class of jobless Americans.  How can they consume if they are jobless?  Easy - what they consume is magically provided!  They are entitled to it, after all.  And the rest of us can only shrug.

But again, why the sugar?  Because if the GDP looks sweet the cattle in the pen won't take so much notice.  Gee, doesn't that sound a little like how the wondrous health care system was foisted upon us?  Truth can't be a part of the mix or the agenda won't get passed?  Boy, that "revelation" got quickly swept under the rug!

But will adding the smoke and mirrors to the soup pot, the so-called sugar high, spur production?  Think carefully.  With so many jobless or underemployed (notice all the part-time jobs "created" that are counted to sound like full-time jobs?) how much money will there be for the cattle in the pen to spend on, well, on production?  Think carefully.  Will those having to pay abnormally huge premiums and deductibles for their new and wondrous health care plans (mostly to fund those who will be "subsidized") have discretionary incomes to be buying and buying all the new production?  Think carefully

So, Mr. Mill has it right.  How would it be said today?  Let's see - how about, "If you like your slow economy, you can keep it!"

How about a clever twist on the quote above?

Free enterprise produces 
the want for consumption! 

Mill was one of the most influential political economists of his century.  He certainly demonstrated that supply-side economics grew economies.  A very good book, a collection of his writings, can be found here.  




1 comment:

  1. Makes sense reading how free enterprises work.

    ReplyDelete