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Oh yes, it's so easy to make these arguments.

my public school system is falling into bankruptcy and disrepair so I enroll my child in an expensive private school.  more consumption.  good!
First, your reason is not the only one people send their kids to private schools: for example, some could be - oh horror - religiously minded. Whatever you or I think about religion, it's their choice.

Second, if the public school system is falling into disrepair, it probably means not enough money is collected to run it. And some of that money goes into the private school system instead. What's the basic difference - unless you are willing to argue that the public schools are inherently more efficient, and this reallocation is a net loss to the society. The difference is at most of second order even in this case.

my point is obvious:  simple measures of "consumption" are simply insane, even in the absence of true energy and environmental costs.  not all consumption is the same.

Yes, true. There are "goods" and "bads", with tobacco being a best example. Even if we take care of second-hand smoking externality by taxing tobacco, and make smokers pay more into the health insurance system because their treatment costs more, is this consumption "good" for them? Regretfully, that's what these people decide to do, and decide to spend their income on. There's no way you could avoid classifying this as consumption. What is necessary, of course, is that proper taxes make the private cost of this consumption reflect the true social cost. But this is a public policy issue, not in competence of the statistical bodies.

There are many other examples of things that according to some value judgement are pure waste - watching Hollywood movies, eating fast food, donating your time or money to charity, or driving a sports car are examples for people I know. Still, other people do value them. Some people buy guns for pure fun and because gun possession satisfies them - probably, in a way you or I would enjoy a good book or a nice picture on the wall.

if categories B and C here far outweigh category A, then rising levels of consumption are bad news.  they mean that products are shoddy and misfortune is commonplace.  which is... actually... kinda where a lot of the industrial workforce is  wrt expenditures at present.

If this is indeed the case, we will probably see this in the aggregate levels of consumption: if you have to buy a gun to protect from predation, running a small business is probably risky as well, and whole country's income will go down. Just read De Soto. So, again, I don't quite see how your argument is inconsistent with what I was saying.

Actually, consumption could be a better measure than GNI, because inequality in consumptions tends to be significantly less than in income, thus aggregation is less of an issue.

by Sargon on Thu Nov 29th, 2007 at 05:02:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
some could be - oh horror - religiously minded

May indeed be horror -- to the child...

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu Nov 29th, 2007 at 06:56:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]
There are many other examples of things that according to some value judgement are pure waste - watching Hollywood movies, eating fast food, donating your time or money to charity, or driving a sports car are examples for people I know.

actually my point was not (for once) about making moral assessments of the ways people spend money, just drawing an (imho essential and overlooked) distinction between spending money in a discretionary way, for pleasure or benefit, and "having to" spend money to compensate for injuries, misfortunes, crimes, degradation of the quality of life, etc.  all yr examples above fall into Cat A for the purposes of my argument here; though we could wrangle about their true-cost to the society at large and hence their desirability as consumption behaviours, they are gratifying to the individual making the expenditure, and hence not Cat B or Cat C (red-queen expenses and damage-control expenses).

the sports car is a Cat A expenditure -- fun, pleasing, gratifying;  the hospital bill after the car crash is a Cat C.  in many cases (certainly seems to generalise to society as a whole), an excess of Cat A leads to a rising tide of Cat B and Cat C.  actually this seems axiomatic if we're on a finite planet, which we are.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Thu Nov 29th, 2007 at 01:00:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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