@@ghastor1393 RUclips algorithm often recognize creator that can hook a large audience with one video and then make them watch a lot of other video afterwards. In this case the breadtube audience.
Especially the quality one because many times "quality" is forced on us rather we like it or not. Having cars with 1960's level accomedations and a corresponding price is impossible to get. So for many people "luxuries" are not optional but mandatory if they want the bare minimum, in this case a vehicle to take them from point A to point B. Maybe quite a lot of those people would have bought a 2CV if they could have but laws and capitalists don't allow them to.
The funniest thing I have ever learned about GDP is that I can essentially let my friend pay for a night out, lets say 100$ total, and tell him I owe him 50$, then that actually creates a higher GDP than if we would pay for our respective things because dept is included.
Someone once explained the limited nature of GDP to me by pointing out two stay at home parents (with different kids in different households) contribute nothing to GDP. However those same stay at home parents could pay each other to take care of one another's children and then that would contribute to GDP despite the fact that the exact same work is being done and any pay cancels itself out.
@@theomegajuice8660 if they have to pay taxes on the income, they would then be "contributing to the economy" despite paying each other to do the same thing they were doing for free, the government now gets a slice so its considered output
And it's important to note that a huge amount goes to waste. A country that has strict laws about wasting food and consumer goods can maintain a much higher quality of living than another country even with a lower GDP.
I don't think Graeber's "BS Jobs" was meant to be a perfectly scientific research document on the nature of employment in capitalist bureaucracies so much as the start of a conversation on how much labor is really necessary to maintain a solid standard of living and what is done to maintain employment levels beyond that point or "how many jobs really need doing?". A central critique of most socialist tendencies has been the pointless redundancy in capitalist production, the commodification of everything, the consumerist culture that drives excess production and consumption, and more specifically anarchists and other libertarian socialists have viewed the relationship between the state and business more critically than some others and pointed out the way this often bloats the job market far beyond what's necessary even with consumption-based economies. Most socialists hold that the bulk of the work done today doesn't need to be done at all and I think that was one of his main points, particularly after watching a few interviews and talks he did on the subject. It was more of the start of something than the end but unfortunately someone else will have to take it up if it's to continue. 6 mos down the line and I think much of what he said or asked has been answered with a resounding "most jobs are bs".
Right. Graeber himself would be not too excited about the quality of evidence going into it - it's just a survey plus informative anecdotes, and that marks an intriguing _start_ of study rather than a conclusion.
I think that's fair, but perhaps not the most pertinent question we should be asking. It seems we might be running into the problem of too little work. Idleness and lack of functioning work is a bigger problem to me than excess work. (Excess production can be a problem, sure, but it's not so intrinsically tied to jobs).
I also think it was targeted at neo-liberalists. One of the things they like to say is that socialism will lead to a lot of pointless jobs that won't happen in a capitalist economy. Graeber's book was largely a political statement to refute that. That pointless jobs exist in any extremely top down economy rather they be capitalist or communist. This is even more so today with a lot of the push being for things whose value is dubious and much more volatile. A lot of products that rely almost exclusively on market manipulation, coorsion, mental tricks and other artificial methods to induce demand rather than because people actually want them.
Iirc, Marx thought mental labor could be productive as well. I swear I've seen direct quotes supporting this, but the only section I could find supporting this is in Chapter 6, volume 1 of Capital: "By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description."
I have been arguing with people that some things that are counted under GDP that actually hurt the economy for years. I like to use the simplified example that if someone steals your 20.000 dollar car and sells it to a chop shop for 500 and that 500 would count towards GDP then labour has been performed that has actually reduced productivity, earning income that makes society worse. There are plenty of things that the world of finance does that compare to this. To my understanding, the economy has a structural productive capacity and a moving demand for this productivity. The economy goes down when goods and services could be produced but demand drops (often because of a lack of disposible income) which means people get laid off which means they have less disposible income etc. The sector of people this hits the hardest is also the one that spends the biggest part of their income: Poor and lower middle class people. If your income barely covers your basic living expenses then you will spend all of your money, keeping the demand your income creates at a maximum. By comparison: Capitalist class individuals spend maybe 30% of their income on goods and services, while the bottom segment spends about 97%. Ergo more money going into the hands of poor people keeps demands high, while more going into the hands of rich people drops demand. When demand is high and the economy goes up, more jobs are available and things actually improve for the lower classes. When these lower classes have a little more then they need for basic necesities, they become a fatter target for exploitative finance practices such as predatory lending and shitty bogus saving plans and investment funds. You see all kinds of downright parasitic businesses pop up when the economy is up. What you also see is bubles. Money gets speculated into existence in vast amounts without anything being produced until all of it just comes crashing down when the suspension of disbelief can't be maintained anymore. The capitalist class then minimizes losses by laying off workers and other such measures that move the damage down the food chain, which in turn causes a massive decrease in the disposible income of the lower class which drops demand which tanks the economy, causing more layoffs and so forth until we hit rock bottom and start moving in the opposite direction again. Keynes model took a lot of flack because he believed that the governement should create demand by investing, thus stopping the crash. I think the problem with this model is that it rather matters where you invest. You could easily create demand by giving it to the poor, instead governments who follow this model give the money to large corperations which they figure will use it to employ more and trickle that shit down. It's investing in the solution rather then the problem. Instead of bailing out the bank, the government would be better off letting the bank die and simply compensating the account holders by garuanteeing their savings, all the while forclosing on the personal assets of every board member.
Thought provoking. It is so easy to be lazy with respect to understanding the make up of measures such as GDP; this article is a stark reminder of how important it is to step back and challenge what you are reading.
You also have the problem of waste with a lot of food and goods being produced but never actually consumed, largely deliberately to create artificial scarcity. You also have the broken window fallacy about how producing more doesn't necessarily mean that people will have more. A country that makes products that lasts half as long will have a much higher GDP even though people's access to goods is unchanged.
I knew there were some subjective decisions in how gdp was measured, but my economics teacher acted like it was being done the only way it could be done, and that it was an objectively perfect measure.
I think it would be really interesting and important for you to go into how unemployment numbers and the definition of unemployment in various G-7 nations (*cough* the US *cough*) is used to pretend that 'the economy' is doing better than it is. Second Thought did a video on it recently but I found the detail and specificity with which they made their argument insufficient for anyone who understands that there are different unemployment measures (e.g. U-6 vs U-4 in the US).
Agreed, the definitions put on unemployment and who counts as a paid worker is something that's analogous to gdp's murky definitions and the background behind defining them.
I'm not sure how much the specific numbers matter. In the case of the US if you do not find a job in a calendar you are erased as being unemployed. If you do not have an address you are not counted. There are plenty of homeless workers in the US and many seek employment for over a year without success. The US would first have to have an interest in collecting accurate data which the government does not. US unemployment is and has been over 20% for decades. It is why drug dealing and violent crime is so high.
"Wait, is this video just about standard criticisms of GDP, but with covd-19 in the title?" No joke, I was literally thinking that exactly 2 seconds before you said it. But I'm more interested in how GDP is defined, so I definitely don't mind.
Another great analogy for the value of robustness over efficiency can be found on the field of IT and engineering, where you have critical services running for clients so you setup redundant storage for backups, networking equipment, memory and CPU cores, and so on and so on.
This is a great introduction into understanding how capitalist ideology frames everything about the conversation on economic development and political economy. Many left us argue for socialism within capitals frameworks, something I find to be extremely counterproductive. I hope your channel continues to show alternative ways of thinking that or not dominated by capital is paradigms from neoclassical economics!
Could you narrow down what you mean by socialism with capitals frameworks? It seems broad. Could that be anything with a market, such as controled or locally restricted economies?
Utilities such as WiFi. HAVE YOU GONE MAD? Just kidding. But really, love your perspective and really enjoy your economic viewpoint on the state of the world right now. Keep up the great work man. Love, from Utrecht
I hope you do a follow-up video to this topic in the near future that looks at those narratives you discussed and how those ideas played out in reality over the past year.
I'm not familiar with Gough's work on Marx, but the distinction between productive and unproductive work has nothing to do with the product itself, it can be material (and fall on you foot) or inmaterial. Productive work is any work under capitalism that produces surplus value for a capitalist. This includes abstract ideas, theories, writings, creativity etc.
9:11 For Marx productive labour was different. For him even a clown was doing "productive labour". Marx's view of productive labour was very different from those before him *including the classics*. He is not a Ricardian substantialist as many think.
There is quite a lot going on now. My country is in "mild lockdown", tomorrow some non-essential shops can reopen, but this situation will go on for a year or two. I'd like to see some insights every week or month, as I got really much time now. No need for daily updates, political analysis, or specific event reporting, I want quality thoughts :) keep save!
I see an issue in adjusting GDP for environmental factors. It would disproportionately impact developing and industrializing nations whose environmental impact is steeper but will eventually plateau while doing little to discourage larger economies whose overall impact is much greater. The result might just be keep to poor countries poor and under-industrialized. Tell me If I'm way off base or someone's already taken consideration.
There is truth in that but it's somewhat thrown off by the fact that most of the polluting activities in poorer countries are done BY companies from richer countries. A good example of this being the ecological devastation of Nigeria under Shell.
Excellent video, hugely impressed. My non-economic-minded friends are constantly throwing around GDP figures to push a particular narrative, and explaining the issues with that figure is tricky at best, without pushing your own narrative in doing so. (Military industrial complex, you sneaky little...) You did a great job. There is one thing I think was omitted though, when you spoke about how only human capital and net financial capital will be damaged during the crisis. My entire point, however, hinges on the idea that livestock isn't accounted for in 'net financial capital', which I'm not sure on. The example I have in mind is, if we take a pig farmer, because our economy is set up to be so efficient, pigs over/under 200lbs can't be processed in factory slaughterhouses, as the machinery isn't capable of doing so. As a result, pigs that were bred and reared with the assumption they would be ready for market consumption aren't required due to the huge drop in demand as restaurants halt trading. The farmer is left with two options, euthanize the pig and accept the loss, or continue to rear the pig even though it won't be able to go to slaughter once the industry has recovered it's demand post-lockdown, and incur further losses with no promise of ROI. This has meant a widescale culling of livestock, and also perishable goods like eggs etc. If we take this example and others like it throughout the economy, the impact of this goes beyond just capital loss. It could have far reaching implications for supply chains moving forward, further restricting our ability to absorb shocks in economic activity as producers try to become even more efficient to absorb the financial losses. Essentially creating a perverse incentive to under produce. It's also means that these current assets held can't be liquidated, so they become a net loss to the economy as a whole, both in capital terms and in access to the resource for value adding enterprises. Do you have any thoughts on how this could be controlled to stop a complete market failure in these areas?
we had pork issues during lockdown in NZ. Too many pigs, cancellation of travelling butchers etc. Took a lot of thinking in the government. Excellent example.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention other harms caused by lockdown such as more domestic and child abuse, mental health problems, alcoholism, cost of missed education (earlier on), cost of missed medical appointments and operations etc
Holy guacamole... This is one of the most cogent, informative, breviloquent, and valuable videos I've ever seen. You have an unparalleled degree of economic profundity, and your channel is a blessing to BreadTube. My only quibble is that you mispronounced "rhetoric," but that's a moot point and indicative of a prolific reader-one who likely reads more often than they speak. Anyway, much love to you, Friendo. Cheers.
I had made a comment earlier in another vid (the housing one) about doughnut economics, but this seems to kinda echo some of the takeaways from doughnut economics. Just commenting for engagement.
7:40 There is also something else you don't really touch on which is that more is not always better. If the economy makes a lot of stuff people just don't want then growth in GDP can actually lead to a decrease in quality of life.
I don't think the problem is the frequency of recessions or flawed GDP measurements, it's the misunderstanding of what these both mean. A recession doesn't mean we're all screwed and doomed for another depression. GDP isn't actually the be-all and end-all of productivity. (There is so much to talk about re: the flaws of GDP.) It's a man-made indicator, just a handy dandy tool with limitations. But it seems people hear that GDP numbers aren't as high as predicted and freak out. So much runs on expectation.
wait, the GDP is measured with surveys? i thought it had to do with the VAT. can you give me a YT link to the technical GDP measuring process? also, here is a silly question, if i decide to sell my gf lunches i used to make for her for free, and get some kind of receipts for it, will that boost my country's GDP?
Commodities dont need to be physical objects in marxist theory. The distinction between productive and unproductive labor is if a specific labor process produces real surplus value. That is, if it adds an overall surplus value to the social capital.
Hey, what do you think about the work done by the Ergodocity Economics people and the Santa Fe Institute in relation to expanding the reach of economic research?
Fantastic video, I am loving your content and I hope you keep this up. I've started trying to take notes on specific ideas from your videos. I really think your content could do great work in educating leftists online to push for material change, and I hope more people check you out.
Can I get your help researching the term 'absolute poverty'? The Tories use it all the time, in place of 'relative poverty', to pretend poverty has not increased since they implemented the term in 2010. But 'absolute poverty' is just 2010's 'relative poverty' figure, adjusted for inflation (which inflation figure they use, I can't find out). So if households use a different inflation figure to capital and finance and so on, I have no idea. And if, as I believe to be the case, household income is falling relative to household expenses, I'm convinced that 'absolute poverty' is simply a mask to hide what's really going on with our record wealth and income inequality. I probably haven't outlined my case very well. But the argument 'don't use relative poverty, because large increases in the wealth and income of the top bracket warp the figures and raise the poverty level, so use absolute poverty instead', well this just seems like either a dumb or deceptive argument considering absolute poverty is literally just relative poverty anyway (albeit adjusted for inflation), so all arguments against relative poverty can surely be levied at absolute poverty also. It's a really important debate to have, because the tories propagandise about absolute poverty remaining constant, and ignore the massive increase in food bank use and so on.
Hello mr.unlearneconomics this is a long shot but if there is anyway I could connect with you, I'm an economics student at a liberal college in Washington state and would love to help in anyway possible with this channel, so yeah thank you
Well this gets into the idea of what societies job is to the individual as well, under capitalism we believe the individual is both valueless and the sole motivator for action.
You are wrong about Marx's productive labour.. The distinction between productive and unproductive labor is meant to act as a guideline for what sorts of line of work the capitalist (not just the industrialist) can (or does) exploit in order to produce profits, and what sorts of line of work he can't (or doesn't) exploit. All lines of work, when viewed from a social point of view, contribute one way or another to the production of profits (or surplus value at a social level), but some lines of work are productive in the sense that they contribute in a direct rather than an indirect manner. Let's stop fantasizing that Marx ignored the existence of money markets and financial values (and therefore labor connected to these sectors of the economy) and all he did was to describe how industrial capital works. Read the entirety of Das Kapital. It's not that hard, i can do it, so can you.
Ok be honest, who else is going through his backlog after being reccomended the Breadtube vs. Economists video???? This. Man. Is. Going. To. Blow. Up.
Guess the RUclips god's decided to extend its hand and recommend a video, sending the channel on a quick trip to the top.
Yes Paul. I'm doing exactly that. Great prediction!
Hahah yup, me too. I was expecting a neoliberal takedown in that video but was pleasantly surprised by a very well balanced response.
@@ghastor1393 RUclips algorithm often recognize creator that can hook a large audience with one video and then make them watch a lot of other video afterwards. In this case the breadtube audience.
Guilty as charged.
I never realized how many value judgements go into something as simple as gdp.
It's value judgements all the way down.
GDP is not simple
This sentence has the same vibe as "I never realized how much industry is required to create something as ＳＩＭＰＬＥ as a nuclear bomb".
Especially the quality one because many times "quality" is forced on us rather we like it or not.
Having cars with 1960's level accomedations and a corresponding price is impossible to get. So for many people "luxuries" are not optional but mandatory if they want the bare minimum, in this case a vehicle to take them from point A to point B. Maybe quite a lot of those people would have bought a 2CV if they could have but laws and capitalists don't allow them to.
The funniest thing I have ever learned about GDP is that I can essentially let my friend pay for a night out, lets say 100$ total, and tell him I owe him 50$, then that actually creates a higher GDP than if we would pay for our respective things because dept is included.
Someone once explained the limited nature of GDP to me by pointing out two stay at home parents (with different kids in different households) contribute nothing to GDP.
However those same stay at home parents could pay each other to take care of one another's children and then that would contribute to GDP despite the fact that the exact same work is being done and any pay cancels itself out.
@@theomegajuice8660 if they have to pay taxes on the income, they would then be "contributing to the economy" despite paying each other to do the same thing they were doing for free, the government now gets a slice so its considered output
The interest on the debt is what causes more money to change hands. If your friend doesn't charge you interest, it doesn't create a higher GDP.
And it's important to note that a huge amount goes to waste. A country that has strict laws about wasting food and consumer goods can maintain a much higher quality of living than another country even with a lower GDP.
I don't think Graeber's "BS Jobs" was meant to be a perfectly scientific research document on the nature of employment in capitalist bureaucracies so much as the start of a conversation on how much labor is really necessary to maintain a solid standard of living and what is done to maintain employment levels beyond that point or "how many jobs really need doing?". A central critique of most socialist tendencies has been the pointless redundancy in capitalist production, the commodification of everything, the consumerist culture that drives excess production and consumption, and more specifically anarchists and other libertarian socialists have viewed the relationship between the state and business more critically than some others and pointed out the way this often bloats the job market far beyond what's necessary even with consumption-based economies. Most socialists hold that the bulk of the work done today doesn't need to be done at all and I think that was one of his main points, particularly after watching a few interviews and talks he did on the subject. It was more of the start of something than the end but unfortunately someone else will have to take it up if it's to continue. 6 mos down the line and I think much of what he said or asked has been answered with a resounding "most jobs are bs".
Can you elaborate on the relationship between state and business blowing up the market? I haven't heard that before, it's intrigued me :)
Right. Graeber himself would be not too excited about the quality of evidence going into it - it's just a survey plus informative anecdotes, and that marks an intriguing _start_ of study rather than a conclusion.
RIP graeber
I think that's fair, but perhaps not the most pertinent question we should be asking.
It seems we might be running into the problem of too little work. Idleness and lack of functioning work is a bigger problem to me than excess work. (Excess production can be a problem, sure, but it's not so intrinsically tied to jobs).
I also think it was targeted at neo-liberalists. One of the things they like to say is that socialism will lead to a lot of pointless jobs that won't happen in a capitalist economy. Graeber's book was largely a political statement to refute that. That pointless jobs exist in any extremely top down economy rather they be capitalist or communist.
This is even more so today with a lot of the push being for things whose value is dubious and much more volatile. A lot of products that rely almost exclusively on market manipulation, coorsion, mental tricks and other artificial methods to induce demand rather than because people actually want them.
Iirc, Marx thought mental labor could be productive as well. I swear I've seen direct quotes supporting this, but the only section I could find supporting this is in Chapter 6, volume 1 of Capital:
"By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and
physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description."
What do plumbers and economists have in common? They both deal with gross domestic product.
I have been arguing with people that some things that are counted under GDP that actually hurt the economy for years.
I like to use the simplified example that if someone steals your 20.000 dollar car and sells it to a chop shop for 500 and that 500 would count towards GDP then labour has been performed that has actually reduced productivity, earning income that makes society worse. There are plenty of things that the world of finance does that compare to this.
To my understanding, the economy has a structural productive capacity and a moving demand for this productivity. The economy goes down when goods and services could be produced but demand drops (often because of a lack of disposible income) which means people get laid off which means they have less disposible income etc. The sector of people this hits the hardest is also the one that spends the biggest part of their income: Poor and lower middle class people. If your income barely covers your basic living expenses then you will spend all of your money, keeping the demand your income creates at a maximum.
By comparison: Capitalist class individuals spend maybe 30% of their income on goods and services, while the bottom segment spends about 97%. Ergo more money going into the hands of poor people keeps demands high, while more going into the hands of rich people drops demand.
When demand is high and the economy goes up, more jobs are available and things actually improve for the lower classes. When these lower classes have a little more then they need for basic necesities, they become a fatter target for exploitative finance practices such as predatory lending and shitty bogus saving plans and investment funds. You see all kinds of downright parasitic businesses pop up when the economy is up. What you also see is bubles. Money gets speculated into existence in vast amounts without anything being produced until all of it just comes crashing down when the suspension of disbelief can't be maintained anymore. The capitalist class then minimizes losses by laying off workers and other such measures that move the damage down the food chain, which in turn causes a massive decrease in the disposible income of the lower class which drops demand which tanks the economy, causing more layoffs and so forth until we hit rock bottom and start moving in the opposite direction again.
Keynes model took a lot of flack because he believed that the governement should create demand by investing, thus stopping the crash. I think the problem with this model is that it rather matters where you invest. You could easily create demand by giving it to the poor, instead governments who follow this model give the money to large corperations which they figure will use it to employ more and trickle that shit down. It's investing in the solution rather then the problem. Instead of bailing out the bank, the government would be better off letting the bank die and simply compensating the account holders by garuanteeing their savings, all the while forclosing on the personal assets of every board member.
great simpsons per minute rate here
Simpsons per 1/5 Sargon
Thought provoking. It is so easy to be lazy with respect to understanding the make up of measures such as GDP; this article is a stark reminder of how important it is to step back and challenge what you are reading.
You also have the problem of waste with a lot of food and goods being produced but never actually consumed, largely deliberately to create artificial scarcity. You also have the broken window fallacy about how producing more doesn't necessarily mean that people will have more. A country that makes products that lasts half as long will have a much higher GDP even though people's access to goods is unchanged.
I knew there were some subjective decisions in how gdp was measured, but my economics teacher acted like it was being done the only way it could be done, and that it was an objectively perfect measure.
I think it would be really interesting and important for you to go into how unemployment numbers and the definition of unemployment in various G-7 nations (*cough* the US *cough*) is used to pretend that 'the economy' is doing better than it is. Second Thought did a video on it recently but I found the detail and specificity with which they made their argument insufficient for anyone who understands that there are different unemployment measures (e.g. U-6 vs U-4 in the US).
Oooo yes, this.
Agreed, the definitions put on unemployment and who counts as a paid worker is something that's analogous to gdp's murky definitions and the background behind defining them.
I'm not sure how much the specific numbers matter. In the case of the US if you do not find a job in a calendar you are erased as being unemployed. If you do not have an address you are not counted. There are plenty of homeless workers in the US and many seek employment for over a year without success. The US would first have to have an interest in collecting accurate data which the government does not. US unemployment is and has been over 20% for decades. It is why drug dealing and violent crime is so high.
"Wait, is this video just about standard criticisms of GDP, but with covd-19 in the title?"
No joke, I was literally thinking that exactly 2 seconds before you said it. But I'm more interested in how GDP is defined, so I definitely don't mind.
Well there has been a lot of nonsense in the media surrounding GDP and corona
Another great analogy for the value of robustness over efficiency can be found on the field of IT and engineering, where you have critical services running for clients so you setup redundant storage for backups, networking equipment, memory and CPU cores, and so on and so on.
This is a great introduction into understanding how capitalist ideology frames everything about the conversation on economic development and political economy. Many left us argue for socialism within capitals frameworks, something I find to be extremely counterproductive. I hope your channel continues to show alternative ways of thinking that or not dominated by capital is paradigms from neoclassical economics!
Could you narrow down what you mean by socialism with capitals frameworks?
It seems broad. Could that be anything with a market, such as controled or locally restricted economies?
Love the South Park Reference. The episode where they start worshipping the economy is really illuminating
How can some people sincerely describe the production of bombs as „productive labour“ lmao
"casualty-producing labor"
Seriously though
Jesus... true.
I guess because it takes resources and labor to produce bombs which someone will pay for. GDP is a measure of a size of the economy, not its quality
I just found you, and I'm glad I did. I appreciate a lot an economic viewpoint of such political issues, it's rare but it's very much needed.
This has appeared out of nowhere in my RUclips recomended videos. Glad it happened :) Thanks for the video explaining GDP and its innards!
Utilities such as WiFi. HAVE YOU GONE MAD?
Just kidding. But really, love your perspective and really enjoy your economic viewpoint on the state of the world right now. Keep up the great work man.
Love, from Utrecht
I hope you do a follow-up video to this topic in the near future that looks at those narratives you discussed and how those ideas played out in reality over the past year.
I'm not familiar with Gough's work on Marx, but the distinction between productive and unproductive work has nothing to do with the product itself, it can be material (and fall on you foot) or inmaterial. Productive work is any work under capitalism that produces surplus value for a capitalist. This includes abstract ideas, theories, writings, creativity etc.
👏🏽
You cerntainly seem to be Hobbie Stuart's most loyal follower
You opened my eyes! I will further inform myself on the subject, thanks for posting the video.
My new favourite channel, by far! Thank you for putting out the content you do in such a concise, insightful and entertaining way.
Damn why are all this man's videos just so good
9:11 For Marx productive labour was different. For him even a clown was doing "productive labour". Marx's view of productive labour was very different from those before him *including the classics*. He is not a Ricardian substantialist as many think.
Here is my comment for.the algorythm
god bless you
thank you, for the economics lecture.
Wonderful! I'm already subscribing because I'd love to see more of these deconstructive looks at economics.
Great video and always awesome to see more UK-based alternative media.
Takes a couple watches, but I'm learning so much from your channel. Thanks!
I've just discovered your channel. I am going to gobble everything you've done up. Where have you been all my life? Brilliant stuff!
Well done. The abandonment of gdp seems to be an ever increasing topic lately.
This was really eye opening. Thank you!!
amazing
There is quite a lot going on now. My country is in "mild lockdown", tomorrow some non-essential shops can reopen, but this situation will go on for a year or two. I'd like to see some insights every week or month, as I got really much time now. No need for daily updates, political analysis, or specific event reporting, I want quality thoughts :) keep save!
May Sir Al Gore's Rhythm bless your channel sir. You're doing wonderful work, love to see more left economists.
Thanks very much!
Bonus comment, revisiting for comprehension. This really holds up!
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
Thanks for making it! Much love!! 🐈⬛
I see an issue in adjusting GDP for environmental factors. It would disproportionately impact developing and industrializing nations whose environmental impact is steeper but will eventually plateau while doing little to discourage larger economies whose overall impact is much greater. The result might just be keep to poor countries poor and under-industrialized. Tell me If I'm way off base or someone's already taken consideration.
That's an interesting thought I should look for that
There is truth in that but it's somewhat thrown off by the fact that most of the polluting activities in poorer countries are done BY companies from richer countries. A good example of this being the ecological devastation of Nigeria under Shell.
Wow this is quite good
Came here from Destiny.
Thanks for this! Think I will need to watch it a couple more times. Like all the clips in this one too
Excellent video, hugely impressed. My non-economic-minded friends are constantly throwing around GDP figures to push a particular narrative, and explaining the issues with that figure is tricky at best, without pushing your own narrative in doing so. (Military industrial complex, you sneaky little...) You did a great job.
There is one thing I think was omitted though, when you spoke about how only human capital and net financial capital will be damaged during the crisis. My entire point, however, hinges on the idea that livestock isn't accounted for in 'net financial capital', which I'm not sure on. The example I have in mind is, if we take a pig farmer, because our economy is set up to be so efficient, pigs over/under 200lbs can't be processed in factory slaughterhouses, as the machinery isn't capable of doing so. As a result, pigs that were bred and reared with the assumption they would be ready for market consumption aren't required due to the huge drop in demand as restaurants halt trading. The farmer is left with two options, euthanize the pig and accept the loss, or continue to rear the pig even though it won't be able to go to slaughter once the industry has recovered it's demand post-lockdown, and incur further losses with no promise of ROI. This has meant a widescale culling of livestock, and also perishable goods like eggs etc.
If we take this example and others like it throughout the economy, the impact of this goes beyond just capital loss. It could have far reaching implications for supply chains moving forward, further restricting our ability to absorb shocks in economic activity as producers try to become even more efficient to absorb the financial losses. Essentially creating a perverse incentive to under produce. It's also means that these current assets held can't be liquidated, so they become a net loss to the economy as a whole, both in capital terms and in access to the resource for value adding enterprises.
Do you have any thoughts on how this could be controlled to stop a complete market failure in these areas?
we had pork issues during lockdown in NZ. Too many pigs, cancellation of travelling butchers etc. Took a lot of thinking in the government. Excellent example.
If only I could buy stock in a RUclips channel....
(which should not be added to a serious metrics of economic and material wellbeing)
very useful and apt
Obligatory engagement comment.
Economics Explained but with critical thinking. Love it.
Algorithm, recommend this channel to any politics related videos in You Tube!
I’m surprised you didn’t mention other harms caused by lockdown such as more domestic and child abuse, mental health problems, alcoholism, cost of missed education (earlier on), cost of missed medical appointments and operations etc
This is real good stuff !
do you happen to have transcripts of these videos that ou could publish?
Thank you. This was a very good perspective.
Holy guacamole... This is one of the most cogent, informative, breviloquent, and valuable videos I've ever seen. You have an unparalleled degree of economic profundity, and your channel is a blessing to BreadTube.
My only quibble is that you mispronounced "rhetoric," but that's a moot point and indicative of a prolific reader-one who likely reads more often than they speak. Anyway, much love to you, Friendo. Cheers.
great to see you finally got to getting onto the youtube train
Looking forward to more!
I had made a comment earlier in another vid (the housing one) about doughnut economics, but this seems to kinda echo some of the takeaways from doughnut economics. Just commenting for engagement.
7:40
There is also something else you don't really touch on which is that more is not always better. If the economy makes a lot of stuff people just don't want then growth in GDP can actually lead to a decrease in quality of life.
Awesome!
I don't think the problem is the frequency of recessions or flawed GDP measurements, it's the misunderstanding of what these both mean. A recession doesn't mean we're all screwed and doomed for another depression. GDP isn't actually the be-all and end-all of productivity. (There is so much to talk about re: the flaws of GDP.) It's a man-made indicator, just a handy dandy tool with limitations.
But it seems people hear that GDP numbers aren't as high as predicted and freak out. So much runs on expectation.
More people need to see this!!! commenting for the algo
I'd like to hear his views on Australian "anti-economist" Steve Keen
wait, the GDP is measured with surveys? i thought it had to do with the VAT. can you give me a YT link to the technical GDP measuring process? also, here is a silly question, if i decide to sell my gf lunches i used to make for her for free, and get some kind of receipts for it, will that boost my country's GDP?
Nice video.
thanks for the video
Do you have any good resources for like baby's first economics? I'd like to go back to these videos one day and understand them
Commodities dont need to be physical objects in marxist theory. The distinction between productive and unproductive labor is if a specific labor process produces real surplus value. That is, if it adds an overall surplus value to the social capital.
Hey, what do you think about the work done by the Ergodocity Economics people and the Santa Fe Institute in relation to expanding the reach of economic research?
Please at least turn on automatic captions for your videos ... make them accessible to more people
Fantastic video, I am loving your content and I hope you keep this up. I've started trying to take notes on specific ideas from your videos. I really think your content could do great work in educating leftists online to push for material change, and I hope more people check you out.
In before this channel outgrows shaun skull
Algorithm do your thing!!
Can I get your help researching the term 'absolute poverty'? The Tories use it all the time, in place of 'relative poverty', to pretend poverty has not increased since they implemented the term in 2010.
But 'absolute poverty' is just 2010's 'relative poverty' figure, adjusted for inflation (which inflation figure they use, I can't find out). So if households use a different inflation figure to capital and finance and so on, I have no idea.
And if, as I believe to be the case, household income is falling relative to household expenses, I'm convinced that 'absolute poverty' is simply a mask to hide what's really going on with our record wealth and income inequality.
I probably haven't outlined my case very well. But the argument 'don't use relative poverty, because large increases in the wealth and income of the top bracket warp the figures and raise the poverty level, so use absolute poverty instead', well this just seems like either a dumb or deceptive argument considering absolute poverty is literally just relative poverty anyway (albeit adjusted for inflation), so all arguments against relative poverty can surely be levied at absolute poverty also.
It's a really important debate to have, because the tories propagandise about absolute poverty remaining constant, and ignore the massive increase in food bank use and so on.
I’m smarter now.
F o r t h e a l g o r i t h m
Nah but fr, really interesting video, hope you keep them up!
👏👏👏
Hello mr.unlearneconomics this is a long shot but if there is anyway I could connect with you, I'm an economics student at a liberal college in Washington state and would love to help in anyway possible with this channel, so yeah thank you
Well this gets into the idea of what societies job is to the individual as well, under capitalism we believe the individual is both valueless and the sole motivator for action.
Man it's been a while since I've seen Boris, I miss the almost daily goofs
Damn, I had no idea GDP was so subjective
Both Vaush and Destiny recommend you, so you must be really good.
What do you and other commenters think about the idea of Gross National Happiness?
this is a gdp video.
comment for algorithim
NonCompete focuses on econ, and is the reason it's called breadtube (kropotkin)
love the content, but why the random clips and gifs interspersed? i get that it's a trend but i don't feel like it really adds much to the video
up
Algorithm
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You really have to read about Marx. Materialism is not that reality is based on physical objects, neither the Marxist Labour Value Theory
Just saying if you want to do a bullshit jobs review/critique it would be really interesting
Yikes!
You are wrong about Marx's productive labour.. The distinction between productive and unproductive labor is meant to act as a guideline for what sorts of line of work the capitalist (not just the industrialist) can (or does) exploit in order to produce profits, and what sorts of line of work he can't (or doesn't) exploit. All lines of work, when viewed from a social point of view, contribute one way or another to the production of profits (or surplus value at a social level), but some lines of work are productive in the sense that they contribute in a direct rather than an indirect manner.
Let's stop fantasizing that Marx ignored the existence of money markets and financial values (and therefore labor connected to these sectors of the economy) and all he did was to describe how industrial capital works. Read the entirety of Das Kapital. It's not that hard, i can do it, so can you.
god i hate south park
Finally a sensible take on this issue