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"Consumption is not the key to economic wellbeing. Deferring consumption is." This statement, as well as "we need to work harder to be better off" never make s
by Tichy 16y ago
"Consumption is not the key to economic wellbeing. Deferring consumption is."
This statement, as well as "we need to work harder to be better off" never make sense to me. Translated they seem to be equivalent to "we need to be less well off to be better off". Doesn't make sense. (Other translations: "we need to live in a smaller house to live in a bigger house" or "we need to eat less to eat more").
- ovi256 16y agoYou forgot the temporal scale: now, then. We work harder now to be better off then.
- Tichy 16y agoIt still doesn't add up: suppose I earn one piece of chocolate per day. If I defer eating one piece of chocolate today, I can eat two pieces of chocolate tomorrow. On average, I still only have one piece of chocolate per day. So I am not better off. In the same vein, if I work harder today I maybe have more money tomorrow and can afford to work less. But on average, I have still worked the same amount of time as before. So working harder does not make me better off on average (if by "being well off" in this case we take "can afford to not work too much"). What REALLY works is increasing the efficiency of work. We are not well off because we work so much. We are well off because we have machines that do a lot of work that other people still have to do manually.
- stretchwithme 16y agoIncreasing the efficiency of work is what we've been talking about. When you defer consumption and use the funds to improve your productive capacity, you are improving the efficiency of your work. I wasn't just talking about not consuming. Sometimes a thought is not complete in the first two sentences of a paragraph. Sometimes the third sentence has to be read too.