Being discarded
Economics and economists have of recent times got a bad name. Their failure to spot the banking crisis and the wild claims regarding the effects of the Brexit vote has led them to be bracketed with the 'false news' artists. They are now seen as part of the manipulative process which, through government and media, is more about persuading us along a course of action rather than as an academic analysis of what will happen if so and so become the norm.
One of the recent and interesting claims is that the text books which the economists receive their training are stuck in a paradigm, more fitted to a classical economic theory where value was largely seen as measuring productive work based on the making of widgets. So often these days widgets are made thousands of miles away and irrelevant to the sum of "our" actions and without the source of economic activity being based on our own doorstep it has forced economists to question the "other " work which our society does but which was never counted as productive. The housewife, adding value to society by looking after the family and the children, perhaps caring for the elderly, the musician who provides pleasure, the artist who cements our understanding of the human condition under which we live, the writer who allows us to see outside the box. All are undertakings which escape the economists gaze and lie at the periphery or outside his or her calculations. The problem of how to evaluate the the impact of a classical concert, how to weigh the impact of wellbeing on an individual or a society and how to place a value on its effectiveness and importantly our happiness.
Of course it could be argued that none of this pays the bills, none of this can be counted as a form of Gross Domestic Product, and placed in a ledger of income and expenditure and yet in our reality it's more and more, "what we do" as the widgets get fewer and the robots become more human.
'Value' has to be reexamined otherwise we, the majority will become worthless, in the economic sense and the fear that being worthless is we will feel worthless, eventually reaching a stage where we will be discarded.
One of the recent and interesting claims is that the text books which the economists receive their training are stuck in a paradigm, more fitted to a classical economic theory where value was largely seen as measuring productive work based on the making of widgets. So often these days widgets are made thousands of miles away and irrelevant to the sum of "our" actions and without the source of economic activity being based on our own doorstep it has forced economists to question the "other " work which our society does but which was never counted as productive. The housewife, adding value to society by looking after the family and the children, perhaps caring for the elderly, the musician who provides pleasure, the artist who cements our understanding of the human condition under which we live, the writer who allows us to see outside the box. All are undertakings which escape the economists gaze and lie at the periphery or outside his or her calculations. The problem of how to evaluate the the impact of a classical concert, how to weigh the impact of wellbeing on an individual or a society and how to place a value on its effectiveness and importantly our happiness.
Of course it could be argued that none of this pays the bills, none of this can be counted as a form of Gross Domestic Product, and placed in a ledger of income and expenditure and yet in our reality it's more and more, "what we do" as the widgets get fewer and the robots become more human.
'Value' has to be reexamined otherwise we, the majority will become worthless, in the economic sense and the fear that being worthless is we will feel worthless, eventually reaching a stage where we will be discarded.
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