2 — LaRouche’s Physical Economic Metrics, Part I: Productive Powers of Labor vs Jobs

October 11, 2017 — How do you measure the growth and progress in an economy? Textbook economics notions of GDP, market analysis, and monetary theory fail to provide a measure of true progress or decline. Economics is fundamentally a physical process, and we start by understanding the role of technologies and machinery in improving the productive powers of labor.

Assignment: Define how you would measure the capital intensity aspect of the iron productivity case study. Choose a sector of production. How has the capital intensity changed in the last 20 years? The last 150 years?

Reading for next class: webcast keynote “Gifts of Prometheus”

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Jeff Owens followed this page 2017-10-20 03:53:42 -0400
Michele Greene commented 2017-10-18 20:53:48 -0400
Former Secretary of Energy Moniz who held office under President Obama,and who reluctantly admitted the lack of funding for nuclear energy fusion financing, has become a leader for fusion energy under president Trump. Interesting turn-around.
David Harold Chester commented 2017-10-15 10:42:57 -0400
Without the assessment of the 3 factors of production of Adam Smith, we cannot properly present nor understand how the progress has actually happened. By looking only at the labor contribution we are unable to make a suitable analysis and because we need to look at the whole of production not only in one or two kinds, can we properly include the way our society has grown. I agree that GDP is unsatisfactory, but it is a lot better than the graph of labor in farming or tons per worker in steel production. In fact we need to cover all 6 major entities within the whole of the social system.Three of these ( Land, Labor and Capital) have been presented by Adam Smith, the other 3 are Government, Producers (as managers) and Financial Institutions.
Peter Coombs commented 2017-10-11 21:35:05 -0400
I just got an email asking for help getting Ruth Baird up to speed on the homework for next class. NO IDEA how to do that.

But I’ll try here… RUTH, here it is: Assignment: Define how you would measure the capital intensity aspect of the iron productivity case study. Choose a sector of production. How has the capital intensity changed in the last 20 years? The last 150 years?

Reading for next class: webcast keynote “Gifts of Prometheus”
Peter Coombs commented 2017-10-11 21:25:44 -0400
Thornton didn’t make it. I don’t have a printer, if you do, see if these will print.Guys, me again. Tonight’s broadcast was tough to follow on my IPad at the website. Problems included stuttering, where a couple of words at the beginning of a sentence came twice – sometimes more than a couple. We lost audio three times, and video 2-3 more times. The transmission from the NJ locale was garbled and folks kept disappearing off the screen (X marks the spot..?). You mentioned YouTube. Is the show being broadcast live there? Might solve my problems…?
Ruth Baird commented 2017-10-11 21:24:43 -0400
I wasn’t able to follow what the homework assignment was. Could you email that to me?
Peter Coombs commented 2017-10-11 21:13:57 -0400
Guys, lost audio!
Michele Greene commented 2017-10-11 21:13:31 -0400
We lost sound after Ernie’s question. Is there any connection? (Just kidding.) Oh,yes. Sound just came back.
Gregory Unger commented 2017-10-11 20:23:55 -0400
How can we best understand the maximum-minimum principle and the isoperimetric principle, both as examples of principles, and as the basis for the Least Action principle?
Jason Ross commented 2017-10-11 20:18:24 -0400
Dear audience – feel free to post comments and questions here! :)
Debra S Mann-Morton followed this page 2017-10-11 19:55:08 -0400
Jason Ross followed this page 2017-10-11 19:11:25 -0400
Benjamin Deniston followed this page 2017-10-11 13:44:35 -0400
David Harold Chester commented 2017-10-04 03:52:09 -0400
We do not need to understand the physics of energy generation nor its history in order to learn how our society works. Interesting as this writing is, it does not allow us to beging to develop a picture of our society at large. I am dissapointed.

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