Re: General Welfare

[Shann Turnbull <sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu>]

Charles Upton stated that he had "no idea no idea what sovereignty means in
this context".  I must apologise for not defining this word as I thought
that it might be self-evident from my posting of November 2, "Ownership and
Growth (Economics of Ownership 3)" refer to
http://cog.kent.edu/archives/ownership/msg00068.html

So let me explicitly define what I mean by "sovereignty".  

It is my understanding that economic statistics do not recognise who own
"products" in GDP and who obtain "income" recorded in the National
Accounts.  I used the word "sovereignty" to identify that proportion of
product or income owned by resident voters  reported in the national
accounts.  My point being that GDP can increase solely from the products
and income owned by non-residents.  This is why voters living in isolated
Australian mining communities can be cash and asset poor because the mine,
houses and all other assets and facilities in the community are foreign
owned.  I use the word "sovereignty" in the context of the political unit
being considered be it a community, suburb, town, city, region, or nation
state.  If we each unit of a society can become self-financing then each
higher levels can become self-financing to avoid financial colonisation and
exploitation to accelerate economic welfare within the political unit/s to
further political independence.

As Alan Zundell states in his posting of Nov 8th at 5.17
http://cog.kent.edu/archives/ownership/msg00122.html
"The real issue in most policy disputes is who wins 
and who loses, not net aggregate benefit."

I am now curious what word other than "Sovereignty" that Charles uses to
makes distinctions as to who get what in his first year basic "introductory
economics course"  Or am I wrong in assuming that economists make such
distinctions?

Regards

Shann



At 12:31 PM 8/11/1999 , you wrote:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Shann Turnbull <sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu>
>To: <ownership@cog.kent.edu>
>Sent: Sunday, November 07, 1999 8:15 PM
>Subject: Re: General Welfare
>
>
>> In response to Charles Upton's contribution, could he confirm my
>> understanding that GDP statistics do not concern themselves with the
>> sovereignty of who is better off.  So if growth in GDP is generated by
>> foreign owned corporations then the voting citizens (so this excludes
>> corporations) of the country may be no better off and indeed could be
>worse
>> off if their share of pie shrunk while the foreign owned pie grew.
>>
>GDP statistics measure the goods and services produced in a country.
>Period.  I have no idea what sovereignty means in this context.  Dan Bell
>used the word in a technical sense and I responded in that sense.
>
>Clearly if GDP goes up while National Income goes down, holders of national
>income lose.
>
>But be careful:  corporations are ultimately owned by individuals, and their
>"earnings" are eventually earned by individuals.
>
>Of course, this is all quite basic material , covered in any introductory
>economics course.

Shann Turnbull
P.O. Box 266 Woollahra, Sydney, Australia, 1350
Phone: 02 9328 7466 office; 02 9327 8487 home
Fax: 02 9327 1497 home & office.  Mobile 0418 222 378
Outside Australia, replace first "0" with "61" after international access code
Life long E-mail: sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu
http://www.mpx.com.au/~sturnbull/index.html