Spent a lot of hours behind the wheel these last few weeks. Driving from the 'services' economy of the greater mid-atlantic Washington DC USA region, through rural WV, and Pa, up through industrialized and agricultural southern Canada, down through agricultural and tourist economy of northern Michigan/UP...
A model came to mind. A Very Simple Economic Model. ----------------------------- Albert, the blacksmith. Earns the equiv of $24,000 US a year plying his trade. Beverly, the mortgage banker. Earns the equiv of $240,000 US a year, plying her trade. Charles, the surgeon, Earns the equiv of $2.400,000 US a year plying his trade Emily, the CEO, Earns the equiv of $24,000,000 US a year plying her trade. In this community, folks work 8 hours a day to fulfill their trade obligations, no more, no less. In this community, folks work 5 days a week to fulfill their trade obligations, no more, no less. In this community, folks work 48 weeks a year to fulfill their trade obligations, no more, no less. In this community where Albert, Beverly, Charles and Emily live, it takes 1 hour to go the communal well, and draw the water needed for the day, and haul it back to their respective domiciles. ----------------------------------- Q1. What is an hours labour worth in this community? Q2. Should the community consider bringing in cheap labour to haul their water? Q3, Should the community levee a tax and use the tax to pay the cheap labour to haul the water? Q3.1 If so, at what rate should Albert, Beverly, Charles and Emily be taxed? Discussion. What is this hour devoted to drawing water worth? Since there are 24 hours in the day, and all the hours are spoken for, doing the regular stuff, like raising kids, cleaning house, working, fiddling about, and occasionally watching NFL or world cup rallye, the only reason to do offload the hauling of water duty would be to gain an extra hour of free time. So, to Albert, an hour of free time is essentially worth $1000 over a year. To Beverly, $10,000, to Charles $100,000 and to Emily $1,000,000. ------------------------------------ Discussion How does the Nash Equilibrium bear on this scenario? ------------------------------------- Somewhere, I'm sure this Very Simple Model is already addressed. If someone could point me to a paper, I'd greatly appreciate it. Comments please. thanks. _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [email protected] http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
