Lol, you need to read Pikety's books. Seems that economists mostly sit around doing imaginary "mathematics" making up meaningless equations that prove whatever they want to prove.
Not news to me, I figured that out decades ago when our faculty sponsor for the sailing club while I was in graduate school was an econ professor and getting disgusted with the subject. Airy fairy bullshit is what I would call most of it. When the currency is pegged to a physical object (like gold) increases in production, harvest, efficiency, or mining all result in lower prices as the amount of gold is more or less fixed, and the available currency is infelxible. One of the major causes of the Depression was the gold standard -- as industrial production ramped up in the 20's -- one of the golden ages of efficiency increases and productivity increase per worker hour (mostly due to automation) -- and the US had some really nice crop years, the amount of goods increased rapidly at a time when gold mining was yeilding very little gold. If you had twice as much wheat this year as last, it can only cost half as much per bushel if there is no more gold. Add in the collapse of the embargo on Russian wheat when the Whites lost the civil war and the Reds took over and the consequent collapse of the European wheat market for American wheat, and prices plummeted. The flip side of that equation, to my mind, is that when you inflate your way out of massive debt, as the Western world has been doing since the 1960s, prices inevitably must rise as the value of the floating currency declines -- and vast "fortunes" made by high speed stock trading and real estate speculation decrease the value of the currency (also known as inflation). _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
