Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (88320)	3/31/2001 6:36:25 PM
From: NOW	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

The thing that is amazing to me is that consumers are not yet getting paid to save business money very often: ie paying bills by the net is a no brainer to save business big bucks but they charge for the service! they should reward it! but in other areas I thouroughly disagree with you: savings are not always savings if the consumer walks in disgust: voicemail often gives me the willies

To: GraceZ who wrote (88320)	3/31/2001 6:49:48 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

grace, let's say you saved 100 people, for the sake of discussion. great, micro productivity has been improved. macro productivity may have improved, may have decreased or may have stayed the same - we don't know without more information. what if those 100 people sat around and collected unemployment and did nothing productive (in fact, they took from the system!)? then macro productivity went nowhere, all else being equal. let's say those 100 people went out, found jobs and created revenues somewhere. those revenues show up in gdp, right? it is counted. the marginal revenues these folks created is, by definition, the increase in macro productivity. well, the fact is that gdp was growing marginally above historical levels and this shocked alan greenspan. so much so, that he rigged the calculation. nobody has been able to provide a cogent explanation as to why the numbers need to be rigged. if half of america was put out of work by technology and did nothing productive while gdp stayed flat, macro productivity didn't increase! all that happened was a transfer of wealth within the macro system. now, alan.com doesn't see it that way. he wants to measure some ethereal value system and arrive at a non-economic measure of value and combine that with an economic measure of value and get something all but meaningless. unfortunately, these meaningless numbers are used to make policy. if something needed to be done, alan.com should have created a second metric to measure his personal vision of value and left economic gdp alone.