sagt dieser Beitrag aus LeMetropoleCafe.
"Of Mass Delusions, Productivity and Other Important Matters!!!!
Recently, we all have been bombarded by the"Good News".
And the"Good News" is that productivity seems to be riding a rocket ship to the moon as 2001 fourth quarter productivity was revised upwards to a 5.2% rate!!!!
As well, GDP in Q4 was reported to have risen at a 1.39% yearly rate, this at a time where hundreds of thousands of people were laid off, airlines were nearly shut down, imports and exports dropped and the general economy activity dropped around the nation.
Indeed it would seem that nirvana has arrived. What the pundits fail to mention is that
"labor Non-farm Business" productivity was so good mainly due to a rise of 1.2 % in the output rate AND a FALL of 3.8 % rate in hours worked.
Please put your seat belts on now, as the"Good News" only gets"better":
Manufacturing productivity was up 4.1% for the same quarter. While output
DECLINED at a 6.7% annual rate, hours worked DECLINED at 10.4% annual rate.
If that was not enough, non-farm business productivity increased at a 1.9% rate in
2001, while output increased at a 0.9% rate and hours worked DECREASED at a 0.9% rate.
It even gets better with Manufacturing productivity, which was up at a 1.1% clip in 2001, while output FELL at a 4.3% rate and hours worked FELL at a 5.3% rate.
So you see now, how the system works....if we need to improve"GDP" and
"Productivity" in any given quarter we just need to fire some workers, say 500,000 or so for good measure, then we just need to have a BIG fire sale of cars at 0% interest rates, and then we just sit tight on the price of oil through derivatives, arm twisting and manipulations to force a negative inflation rate into the equations so that it"appears" as if we have actually more output.
Last, but not least, we need to"infuse" a couple hundred billion of freshly created dollars into the aggregates and another few into the international banking system.
Presto chango!!!! we could be hired any minute by the Fed or by the government in order to help them devise more creative ways to cook the books and DECEIVE the economically illiterate general population.
We even have right now very important people saying that last year's recession
"maybe" never occurred and others saying that the recovery is"well under way".
Who do you believe? The one that says that yesterday never happened or the one
that says that today is not happening?
These people don't even bother to cross-check their stories between themselves.
Maybe we need another major disaster this quarter so that we can have some more
rising GDP and Productivity figures!!!!
Let us put the data in other ways:
While the Multifactor productivity, which tries to account for the resulting output
based on the combination of several inputs, seems to be increasing, the assumptions made to support these results are wrong, since they do not account for the looting of the infrastructure of the economy or of other countries for that matter.
Multifactor productivity measures reflect the joint effects of R&D, New
Technologies, economies of scale, management skills and organizational changes, etc. It tries to measure the anti-entropic gain in the economy, which we have attempted to describe in previous essays.
While Output per Hour is up from an index of 89 in 1989 to 107.9 in 1999, a GAIN
of 21.2% in 10 years, we have that Output per Unit of Capital (capital defined as equipment, structures, inventories and land) dropped in the same period from an index of 100.8 to an index of 98.1 or -2.7%.
So it would seem, as if output is increasingly INTANGIBLE or UNREAL, because
how can you have a continued increase at a 2% annual average when you need more capital in order to produce it?
Put in other words, the decreasing productivity per unit of capital can only mean that we need increasingly more TANGIBLE or REAL or PHYSICAL capital in order to produce a given output.
What this is telling us directly is that we are degrading the infrastructure and we are
not growing, but going backwards.
In effect the exchange value of the labor is being surreptitiously undermined in order to try to maintain a sense of normalcy with the use value of said labor.
The reader can see clearly that effect in the increasing number of families in which BOTH parents HAVE to work in order to make ends meet.
This is the OVERALL DECREASING LIVING STANDARD we are all putting up with now.
The Delusion of the masses is getting larger and larger as the economic literacy
continues to drop by the day. This of course goes hand in hand with the current massive moral degeneration.
Meanwhile, worldwide events suggest an unpleasant war mongering scenario coming
from the politicians and a brewing energy and commodity inflationary crisis coming from the real economy side which wants higher parity prices in order to jump-start real production and diminish the Conceptual part of GDP which is constricting and looting it.
In these times of uncertainty, market and information manipulations, war threats,
inflationary and depressionary collapses and derivative meltdowns, it makes sense to be prepared with REAL MONETARY ASSETS.
It also makes sense to start using Reason, which is the ONLY gift of humanity apart from Love, and which we seldom use."
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