Open Thread June 2010, Part 3

Kevin

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

The thrilling conclusion of what is likely to be an inaccurately named trilogy of June Open Threads.

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

The thrilling conclusion of what is likely to be an inaccurately named trilogy of June Open Threads.

I'm pretty sure this is wrong. If I have a spare apartment and start renting it out, I'm creating wealth, not just redistributing it. So changing the pattern of who rents from whom should influence the total amount of wealth created.

Though I should clarify that when I talk about "the size of the economy" I'm talking about something intangible - the 'wealth of the nation', or more precisely the 'nation's rate of wealth-creation' - rather than simply GDP. Perhaps GDP will reflect the changing rents, perhaps not, depending on which type of GDP we're talking about (I seem to recall that there are several, including a 'spending' measure and an 'income' measure.)

0AlephNeil16y

But we're not talking about someone renting a previously empty apartment, we're talking about a change of occupier. The 'wealth' of the apartment is merely being 'consumed' by someone else. Suppose without loss of generality (?) that the person who was previously in your parents' apartment is now in your old apartment. Then we can describe the change as follows: 1. Two people have swapped apartments. 2. They may be paying different rents from before. Neither 1 nor 2 in itself changes the size of the economy. (Although, if a rent goes up because an apartment is more desirable then that changes the size of the economy.)

9

Open Thread June 2010, Part 3

9

9

9

Open Thread June 2010, Part 3

9

9