Guests!

[MsFish]

Yeah, exactly!

[The Lost One]

Hidden Guest wrote:

Or their are a bunch of creepy people out there who are trying to find out who visists TWG and destroy them in order to increase the productivity of a capitalist society.  

New Years e responded:

I find that unlikely, unless those creepy people are also dumb. Time Wasters contribute quite a bit to the economy, what with their expensive video game and role playing habits.

Not to spoil you clever reply e but, buying expensive video game and role playing habits probably doesn't help the economy very much. A common misconception is that consumption fuels to economy because of economic measurements like the GDP and the CPI. However, the true stregth of an economy is not in consumption but in economic productivity. Productivity fuels the economy and if everyone was fiscally responsible then consumption would mirror productivity, thus the use of GDP and CPI (besides, consumption is much easier the measure than productivity). So, without giving an exhaustive macroeconomic lesson, buying expensive video games and role playing habits are probably not a boost to the economy.

[fuzzyoctopus]

Blah, blah, blah blah.

[Fellfrosch]

I can produce goods and services all day long, but it won't help anyone unless they buy them. You can't overlook consumption any more than you can overlook production--they're useless without each other.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

It's like eating your cake and later realizing that your intestines didn't like it as much as your tongue did.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

You lost me at the word "spoil."

Besides (giving the lie to myself) if you're producing everything, but no one's buying, you're not doing great economically. Consumption isn't measured *just* because it's easier, it's measured because without it, productivity means nothing.

[The Lost One]

The key is, things have to be produced before they are consumed. If there is no production there can be no consumption.

[Archon]

Yes, but if there is no demand, then there is no reason for production of supply. The two are equally important parts of the cycle.

[MsFish]

Economics is the spawn of Satan.

[Archon]

Hadn't you wondered why I am such an expert?

[The Lost One]

Obviously people are confusing their microeconomic and macroeconomics. Supply and demand works a little differently in macroeconomics. In the aggregate, there is no such thing as zero demand because people will always demand something (in macroeconomics, it is irrelevant what it is being demanded because all goods and services are lumped together). Consumption is different than demand and when consumption is less than production, then it means that there are "savings". Note that demand covers both consumption and savings. Production, however, is the real key to economic success because it determines the production possiblility curve/frontier that then determines the maximum amount of possible consumption (and savings). I.e. consumption is dependant on production.

Now, the real interesting question is if economics is the spawn of satan and I have an economics degree and I'm a lawyer (which is an inherently evil profession according to some) does that mean that I'm the devil or do the two negatives cancel each other out? I'm claiming the latter because I refuse to believe that either ignorance of economics or the law is a virtuous thing.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

an evil person would refuse to agree to something.

Maybe your voodoo economics says that demand doesn't mean anything. But if there's no demand for something, people don't produce it. That's just a fact. I fail to see how producing something that never gets used is a virtue. If no one buys games, then the industries reaping money from those buyers dies. How does that have no effect on economic health?

I think what I'm hearing, and maybe it's because you're not saying it right, is that economists don't care if no one is buying, it's all about production, and thus, because they said so, production is the only important factor. Frankly, that sounds like a load of monkey crap. I can't think of why an economy would be healthy because it produces things that never get used. So, humor. Pretend that I (and so many other people on the board) are at least half as intelligent as we claim to be, and stop just telling us that production is good and consumption doesn't matter.

The closest you've come to that is saying that the level of production determines the maximum possible consumption. That's kind of an obvious statement though, and doesn't mean much. If we grow 10billion bushels of wheat, and manage to sell 1 billion of that, and the rest spoils, I'll wager we made very little profit out of it after considering all the labor and materials that go into planting, caring, harvesting, and storing 10 times as much material as got used. In liklihood, we've lost money, which means we can't plant as much next time (if at all) thus reducing our production.

So, maybe you've got a degree. hooray for you. But what you're saying is counter-intuitive and doesn't make sense. I'm not saying your wrong, but I'm saying that you haven't said anything to support your point that does more than say "I got a degree, and this is how it is. So there."

Hardly convincing, when I can point out that by spending a lot of money in an industry, I help keep the companies in that industry viable, which translates to industry viability and their ability to employ more people (who can then afford to support businesses) and produce more, which means, even if production is the only useful index, that consumption is a factor in determining what the production will be in the future.

In the short term, yeah, a company failing doesn't affect the country as a whole. But when companies failing becomes a trend because they aren't making any money off what they produce (it's not consumed), then you lose production too.

I can't see how consumption can possibly be completely unrelated to economic health. Can you give me reasons why consumption is a nonfactor when it appears to have several influences on employment and production?

[MsFish]

Now, the real interesting question is if economics is the spawn of satan and I have an economics degree and I'm a lawyer (which is an inherently evil profession according to some) does that mean that I'm the devil or do the two negatives cancel each other out? I'm claiming the latter because I refuse to believe that either ignorance of economics or the law is a virtuous thing.

No, the "real interesting question" is, why would anyone in their right mind want to discuss Econ for fun?

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

The way I see it, and correct me when you figure out that I am wrong, internal consumption is MORE important to stimulating an economy than internal production on the grounds that a country can import from other economic systems.  Even though the nation is giving money to the other nation, they are recieving, supposively, an equal amount of goods and services in return that they sell for a profit to their population, which causes the money in the economy to circulate, which is good for it...right?  

And because you are getting an equal amount of goods/services imported as the money you are exporting, that will, in turn, cause production because there is currency being circulated instead of being saved, which causes people to be able to get the money they need to be able to produce things themselves, cutting off the need for importing final products...  So, shouldn't consumption be even more important than production inside a nation?

[Fellfrosch]

Neither is more important than the other, Gorgon, because in any case where one factor outweighs the other (you are producing more than is consumed or consuming more than is produced) the difference is a problem. They are ideally balanced and, therefore, ideally equal. Bringing in outside elements via imports or exports is cheating, because then you're only looking at portions of the equation--i.e., the fact that we consume another country's goods without the fact that the other country produced them in the first place.