Harry, language changes all the time. Constantly. It's only because of the printing press and writing it down that we have concentrated languages down to a few thousand now and that the major ones have stabilized.
I learned to write the Japanese hiragana and katakana alphabets before I learned to speak it. They each have 26 letters but that doesn't include the diphthongs, or kyo, jyu sounds. Some have been deleted since 40 years ago. Today, traditionalists complain that Japanese young people are not learning the kanji written language, which has 10,000-plus characters, relying more on English imports, what they view as contaminations of the native tongue. However, language is a utilitarian tool as well as a literary inspiration and will evolve, regardless. Some words become faddish and last as long as teenaged slang. Some words take on new meaning, such as Christian Zionists, which today does not refer to Jews who became Christians but a radicalization of religious fervor about Christian supremacy in global religions, prompted by zealous emphasis on the afterlife's rewards. I think you get my point. Did you see that segment on PBS Newshour about land prices and deflation? I remember the obsession with high prices in Japan. Soloman does a great job explaining economic trends in layman's' terms, as we've both noted before. As a teacher you update and revive the dialogue about conflicting and declining economic realities vs theories. The original posting suggested that monsters of economic depression were stomping around in the background, out of the vision of most. I wondered if the same barometers still applied today because there has been so much change in regional, national and global economies. You answered well about land prices. Do you think the old formulas and analyses apply today? Should footprints from the past be used to scout the path ahead tomorrow? I'm troubled by what could happen with the housing/land market. Would a burst land bubble by itself trigger an avalanche? Will the Fed and new Bush economic team be able to handle that? Karen Watters Cole East of Portland, West of Mt Hood Outgoing mail scanned by NAV 2002 Harry wrote: Do you think that the old alphabet is still useful in this modern age? Should we add extra characters to account for the new technology and global business. (We would have to change that kindergarten tune, of course.) We can add new words - but we still use the basic 26. In the same vein, we must ask have people changed? I would say nothing is so unchangeable as human nature. The Classical Basic Assumptions were described a century or two ago. Has a recent human nature change invalidated them? I would say - not at all. The Classicists used four terms to name concepts that included everything (really everything). Are they out-of-date? Hardly. Yet, neos have added a fifth - the Entrepreneur. Without doubt, the addition of entrepreneur was an invention of conservative neo-Classicals. There was this thing "profit" which was always unearned and/or exorbitant. Profit really had a bad name. Now, we oldies didn't use profit as an economic term. It is an accounting term meaning an excess of income over outgo. It has nothing to do with economics. Obviously, profit had to be made respectable. So, the neos invented the entrepreneur. He was the one who got the profit for taking risks, for managing a business. Classically, as Labor is mental and physical exertion used in production, one wonders how the entrepreneur doesn't fit within this concept. There is a "problem" with Classical concepts. The dichotomies that form the basis of societal conflict disappear. Labor, by definition. includes the nurse, the entrepreneur, the CEO, and the garbage man. By golly! We are all together in one class. Makes class conflict a no-no. We can't have that, can we? Another conflict is between Labor and Capital. To the Classicist, Capital is the name given to products in the production process. How can there be a conflict between Labor and Capital? Does it mean people don't like lathes, or hammers, or blast furnaces. However, it's the people who own the Capital who are to blame. Labor needs Capital to provide them jobs But, hold it! Doesn't Capital need Labor, or the machines will go rusty? It's fairly obvious that Labor and Capital work together. They are on the same side, so why are they fighting? Neither can do much without the other. The obvious weakness of Labor is important. The persistence of poverty and continual unemployment is a cancer on the economy. Yet, this was forecast by Ricardo 200 years ago with his Iron Laws of Rent and Wages. Of course, that's old out-of-date stuff. Now we know better, don't we? Why is it that, even in the richest nations, there is widespread poverty? The neos have no answer. Their solutions are food stamps, general welfare, minimum wage laws, "free" health insurance, "affordable" housing. They raise the school leaving age to stop kids joining the labor pool - also make early retirement attractive to remove people. The bureaucracies explode to take people off the streets. These are no more than neo-Classical band-aids. Even with them, there is still a shortage of jobs, and those that are available are at subsistence (the working poor). Meanwhile, jobs for better trained and educated people require long hours and enervating commutes. And all this while there are perhaps two wage-earners in the family, and second jobs are anything but rare. Our cities are a mess. A new project to revive downtown Los Angeles will use $180 million of pension funds on 7.2 acres of land. Among other things, they will build 251 apartments in 4 abandoned office buildings. The neos have no economic explanation for 4 downtown abandoned buildings sitting on some of the best land in Los Angeles - the Classicals do. The Japanese firm - Shuwa Investments Corporation bought the 7.2 acres for "more than $75 million some 15 years ago. They sold it probably for less than $40 million. (Those unfortunate Japanese land speculators! I seem to remember the ones who bought Pebble Beach Golf Course lost more than $200 million.) The Los Angeles-based development firm purchased the property--spanning three blocks bounded by 8th and 9th streets and Grand Avenue and Figueroa Street--for an undisclosed amount from Shuwa Investments Corp. Shuwa had listed the property for about $40 million, brokers familiar with the deal said. The Japanese-owned real estate firm purchased the property, which includes the former Southern California Gas Co. headquarters, for more than $75 million in 1987. Japanese investors were paying top dollar for U.S. real estate at the time. CIM's plans for the property include new construction and renovation of the old gas company building into loft-style housing. There is a theme running through economics that is almost totally ignored by the neo-Classicals. This is the influence of land on our economies, our cultures, our well-beings - on the directions of our lives. So hardly a voice is raised from the economics profession about the bubble that could be worse than the stock market - the land price bubble. Land prices are rising by 15%-20% a year. What happens if we follow the Asian land crashes - the Japanese crash, or even repeat the S & L crash? How much did it cost a decade ago - $200 billion? - $300 billion? I've forgotten, but it would make a nice addition to the budget deficit. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
