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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (101154)	5/10/2001 4:27:06 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

SB - ...wrt to your argument - that productivity increases may not all be good - you have a great point. look at dram. they increased productivity so much that many nearly went bankrupt. then again, how economically productive is it to increase supply well above demand? productivity in the traditional sense (increase unit output per unit time) is different than economic productivity. gdp is economic productivity - or so it should be. the dram industry is the poster child of increasing unit productivity so much that it resulted in reduced economic productivity. Increases in productivity are unavoidable. It is not a choice to not improve productivity. However, competition usually competes the advantages away. This means that ALL of the advantages go to the consumer in lower prices. As long as the displaced workers can be employed in making new products, everything is fine, although the Economic Masters have trouble accounting for the new products and will not take NO for an answer when told that their measurement schemes cannot work. To maintain the illusion that THEY control the economy, the economic measurements must be forced to give the results THEY need. If new products were not included, and they cannot be easily, and money were not deliberately inflated, the ever increasing productivity would result in a negative growth rate of GDP per capita as consumer prices are driven lower by competition and real standards of living increase. This negative growth rate would be difficult to use to justify the economic role of government, and thus it cannot be allowed to exist as voters might figure out that THEY are not only not really vital cogs in the economy, but that THEY are mostly a pathetic collection of broken teeth grinding away year after year. Regards, Don