Economy death watch

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by snoopy369
(I'm considering food to be 'manufacturing' or 'raw materials' here, by the way, as it is in a sense.)

Snoop,

I'm trying to agree with you but what about cooking food? Is that productive? That's like producing a good, but then people can just as well do that more themselves. But then maybe not as well.

[Krill]

What's the Heinlein quote, ah...

"All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet."

[snoopy369]

Cooking is in a way manufacturing, if it's actually adding value to the food (just as processing food does).

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by snoopy369


I believe that 'real' growth, ie growth in real things like raw materials or manufacturing, is the only true growth in the economy; retail, service, financial, the rest is all just playing with fake money rather than making something actually new. It's all important, and all good for the economy and necessary for a functioning economy (moving money around, real or fake, more is always good) but your actual growth is the amount you either produce, grow, mine, find, or make.

(I'm considering food to be 'manufacturing' or 'raw materials' here, by the way, as it is in a sense.)

I guess it depends on what you mean by "economy" and how you measure it.

I don't consider an increase in the production of physical objects to be necessarily a good thing. Producing more packaging or more disposable goods or more useless junk (define as you will but there is a lot cheap tat out there) is not a good thing even though it is 'economic growth'.

I also don't see how you can justify a necessary component of a functioning economy as being not part of real growth. If you can't have a grownig econcomy without the raw materials, the production methods or the financing, then why single out the financing as not being real?

Further, as an example to help my understanding, would you consider a growth in CD sales to be more 'real' to the economy than the growth in music downloads?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Cooking is in a way manufacturing, if it's actually adding value to the food (just as processing food does).

Cooking seems to me something that is the least productive since you can eat raw food. Also, a lot of people get fat on cooked food, because they eat too much of it. Compare that to a teacher who can give you knowledge that you could not give to yourself.

[Vanguard]

Originally posted by Kidicious
How do we know it's a recession?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/20/news...tors/index.htm



5 straight drops makes it a pretty sure thing.

Well..... while I am sure that business activity is contracting (and has been for several months) that does not mean we are in a recession.

That depends on how much inflation we choose to call growth.

[Dinner]

Nonmanufacturing sectors are real and can create new wealth (example music, books, movies) but they tend to produce more iffy wealth and tend to be more redistributive then creative (services like retail sales, accounting, etc). A healthy economy needs a balance of both and we've been ignoring things like manufacturing and raw materials extraction (though farm production has been strong and does indeed create something new).

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Krill
What's the Heinlein quote, ah...

"All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet."

And the point of that is what?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Vanguard



Well..... while I am sure that business activity is contracting (and has been for several months) that does not mean we are in a recession.

That depends on how much inflation we choose to call growth.

I think that there has never not been a recession when the leading indicators went down 5 straight months.

[Krill]

Che, the point Heinlein was making was that Communism doesn't work. I'm just using it as a counter example to snoopys' assertion that non-manufacturing jobs don't create wealth.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Oerdin
they tend to produce more iffy wealth and tend to be more redistributive then creative (services like retail sales, accounting, etc).

Are you saying accounting isn't creative?

On a more serious note I would say that things such as accounting create 'real wealth', to the extent that they are often fundamental to a successful operation of a business. If you don't have even a basic system of paying bills and collecting payables then your business will fail in short order.

[Dinner]

Only bad accounting.

Rather it is a service and like most services it tends to not create wealth but instead redistribute existing wealth. This rule isn't ironclad (I pointed out examples in the previous post) but a generality which is mostly true.

[Dauphin]

Without accounting you would have no (business) wealth.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Only bad accounting.

Rather it is a service and like most services it tends to not create wealth but instead redistribute existing wealth. This rule isn't ironclad (I pointed out examples in the previous post) but a generality which is mostly true.

Accounting information creates wealth in the same way a tool does. You can use it to create wealth. So an accountant produces wealth just like someone who makes hammers does.

[Aeson]

Clearest indicator yet that we are in a (global) recession:



$800k? A measly $800k? I used to get multiple 8 figure offers a day, and now it's just $800k?