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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Tue Mar 26, 2013, 08:12 AM Mar 2013

Economics and the Twin Horsemen of the New Apocalypse

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/26-0

**SNIP


To what end? That question isn’t even considered. The implicit assumptions, of course, are maximizing economic growth and creating more wealth.

These two unexamined assumptions are the twin horsemen of the new apocalypse.

People generally have a sense of what is meant by growth, but the concept of what constitutes wealth is a bit more elusive. Most definitions offered by economists can be represented by a statement like this: those material things which are produced by labor, can satisfy human wants, and must have an exchange value. Note that money – or currency – is not wealth in this definition. But, the exchange value we use to measure wealth is money.

Whether that growth is distributed fairly and whether it exceeds the capacity of the environment to sustain, is either assumed away by the Invisible Hand, or dismissed disdainfully by economists as the province of philosophers and other soft academics in squishy social disciplines.
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Economics and the Twin Horsemen of the New Apocalypse (Original Post) xchrom Mar 2013 OP
Good read. Explains, in simple terms, iemitsu Mar 2013 #1
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