Jim Devine wrote,
> I didn't say that "a single abstraction" could do so.
Why do I get the feeling that your favorite tropes are "I didn't say" and
"what you said implies . . ."
> I agree with Levins & Lewontin, in their DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, that
> neither the whole not the parts have ontological priority. To
> paraphrase, they say that the whole makes the parts, while the part
> makes the whole. I see this relationship as a dynamic one.
We're not talking about ontological priority, we're talking about cause
and effect. Does a negative correlation between unemployment and inflation
indicate a causal relation between the two or simply an association of
each with some other common variable (such as heterogenous
industrial capacity thresholds).
> if one is looking at _nominal_ GDP, it's simply price times quantity for
> all final products. There aren't really any "weights" since it's not a
> weighted average.
You're the one who raised the issue of "looking at _nominal_ GDP". I don't
see the point of doing so. Nominal GDP isn't calibrated finely enough to
tell us anything about the unemployment/inflation correlation. For that
matter "unemployment" and "inflation" are pretty gross as far as I'm
concerned. If you want to start talking at least about a two sector model,
then I might be more interested. I would be even more interested to see
"unemployment" disaggregated. As it stands, unemployment is a moving army
of metaphors.
> No, it's [Say's Law] not tautological. It assumes that sum of the excess
> supplies for each good or service (that are in excess supply) equals
> the sum of the excess demands for all of the other goods and services.
I thought Keynes said it more simply, something like supply creating its
own demand.
> It ignores the fact that there may be an excess demand for _money_, so
> that excess supplies for goods and services may persist.
Basically hoarding, right?
Tom Walker
