THE STRUCfURE OF A MODERN ECONOMY

Transcription

1 THE STRUCfURE OF A MODERN ECONOMY

2 Also by Kenneth E. Boulding BEASTS, BALLADS AND BOULDINGISMS BEYOND ECONOMICS COLLECTED PAPERS: VOLUMES I-VI CONFLICT AND DEFENSE DISARMAMENT AND THE ECONOMY (edited with Emile Benoit) ECODYNAMICS ECONOMIC ANALYSIS ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM (edited with Tapan Mukerjee) ECONOMICS AS A SCIENCE *THE ECONOMICS OF HUMAN BETTERMENT (editor) THE ECONOMICS OF PEACE THE ECONOMY OF LOVE AND FEAR EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMICS HUMAN BETTERMENT THE IMAGE THE IMPACT OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES LINEAR PROGRAMMING AND THE THEORY OF THE FIRM (edited with W. Allen Spivey) THE MEANING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THE OPTIMUM UTILIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE (edited with Lawrence Senesh) THE ORGANIZATIONAL REVOLUTION PEACE AND THE WAR INDUSTRY (editor) A PREFACE TO GRANTS ECONOMICS A PRIMER ON SOCIAL DYNAMICS PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMIC POLICY THE PROSPERING OF TRUTH READINGS IN PRICE THEORY: VOLUME VI (edited with George J. Stigler) A RECONSTRUCTION OF ECONOMICS REDISTRIBUTION THROUGH THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM (edited with Thomas F. Wilson) REDISTRIBUTION TO THE RICH AND THE POOR (edited with Martin Pfaff) THE SKILLS OF THE ECONOMIST THE SOCIAL SYSTEM OF THE PLANET EARTH (with Elise Boulding and Guy M. Burgess) STABLE PEACE THREEFACESOFPOWER TOWARDS A NEW ECONOMICS TRANSFERS IN AN URBANIZED ECONOMY (edited with Martin and Anita Pfaff) THE WORLD AS A TOTAL SYSTEM *Also published by Macmillan

3 The Structure of a Modern Economy The United States, Kenneth E. Boulding sometime Distinguished Professor of Economics, Emeritus University of Colorado at Boulder with the assistance of Meng Chi!50th YEAR M MACMILLAN

4 the estate of the late Kenneth E. Boulding 1993 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1993 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

5 Contents List of Figures and Tables Abbreviations Preface 1 The Structure of an Economy 2 Human Capital 3 Sizes and Proportional Structures of Total Output and Income 4 Money and Prices 5 Capital Structures 6 The Role of Government 7 The World Economic Environment 8 Towards Understanding and Control 9 What of the Future? Notes and References Appendix: Data Tables Index vi ix X v

6 List of Figures and Tables Unless stated otherwise, all figures are for the United States and all dates are for Figures 2.1 Total population Live births and deaths, Total annual increase in population Population by age group, Labour force and population of labour force age, Population in non-labour force, labour force and employment Employment by sector (percentages) Employment by sector (thousands) Per capita national account index Per capita real net product of the civilian labour force Major components of the gross capacity product (in constant 1982 dollars) Major components of the gross capacity product (as a percentage of GCP) National income by type of income Average gross weekly earnings and real compensation, Percentage share of aggregate income, Families, distribution by total income, Implicit price deflator (1) (gross national product) Implicit price deflators (2) (personal consumption expenditure, gross private domestic investment) Implicit price deflators (3) (exports, imports, government purchases of goods and services) Federal government deficit or surplus vs consumer price index, Purchasing power of the various forms of liquid assets, vi

7 List of Figures and Tables vii 4.6 Average currency held per capita Per capita currency plus demand deposits, and GNP deflators Components of Ml Consumer price indexes: all items, rent and residential, Consumer price indexes: food, clothing and upkeep, Consumer price indexes: commodities, durables and non-durables, Consumer price indexes: transportation and medical care, Common stock price indexes, Balance sheets for the US economy: non-financial corporate business, Balance sheets of the household sector, Consumer credit outstanding Mortgage debt outstanding as percentage of GCP, Mortgage debt outstanding by type of property, Mortgage debt outstanding by holder, Private domestic investment Capital consumption Real net private domestic investment Increase in real capital Interest rate vs interest as percentage of national income Real rate of return and interest rate Components of manufacturers' inventories by stage of process, Components of manufacturers' inventories by durability of goods, Inventories of manufacturing and trade, Sales by manufacturing and trade, Gross private domestic investment Government expenditure Federal outlays, fiscal years Federal receipts, fiscal years Government budget surplus/deficit (in current dollars) 75

8 viii List of Figures and Tables 6.5 Government budget surplus/deficit (in constant 1982 dollars) State and local government revenue by source, fiscal years State and local government expenditure by function, fiscal years Tariff indexes, Trade per capita vs GNP per capita for 114 countries, Relative shares of world trade: average of exports and imports, Relative shares of world trade: exports by major regions, Relative shares of world trade: imports by major regions, World trade total, Exports and imports Foreign exchange rates of US dollars, World petroleum wholesale price, Crude oil and petroleum product imports, Federal Reserve discount rates vs prime rates, Corporate profit/(profit + interest) vs unemployment rate, Corporate profit/(profit + interest) vs unemployment rate, Corporate profit/(profit + interest) vs unemployment rate, Business inventories vs the unemployment rate, Business inventories vs the unemployment rate, Business inventories vs the unemployment rate, Tables 3.1 Income distribution by population fifths, families, Price deflators in the Great Depression, Liquid assets, 1959 and

9 Abbreviations COMER GAIT GCP GNP GPDI ISEW MMMF NCP NNP NPDI OPEC PCE PIG Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gross Capacity Product Gross National Product Gross Private Domestic Investment Index of Substainable Economic Welfare Money Market Mutual Fund Net Capacity Product Net National Product Net Private Domestic Investment Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries Personal Consumption Expenditures Profit and Interest Gap ix

10 Preface Important aids to the development of human knowledge are careful records of the positions of a system over time, the study of which may reveal patterns amd relationships that otherwise would not be perceived. A classic example of this is the work carried out by Tycho Brahe ( ) and Johann Kepler ( ). For more than 20 years Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer supported by the Danish king, made the most careful records of the movement of the planets and the sun and moon that had ever been undertaken, and this without the aid of a telescope. He moved to Prague in 1597 and was joined by a young assistant from Germany, Johann Kepler, who later deduced from Tycho Brahe's records his three famous laws of planetary motion around the sun. Something a little like the Brahe-Kepler process is happening in economics. Time series in economics go back at least as far as Sir William Petty ( ) for individual prices, which were used to a small extent by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. It was not however until the development of national income statistics around 1929, largely under the inspiration of Simon Kuznets ( ), that what might be called the 'Brahe effect' of the continuous record over time of the major variables for an economic system as a whole became significant. We now have more than 60 years of national income statistics and their various components and supplements, such as figures on unemployment and the labour force, price levels, relative prices and so on. What might be called a 'Kepler effect', the use of these data to detect previously unrecognised relationships among economic variables, has lagged behind. The mathematisation of economics goes back, of course, to Coumot, Jevons and Walras in the 19th century, but the results have been disappointing, perhaps because of the 18th-century celestial mechanics type of mathematics that has generally been used. Deterministic dynamic mathematical models are often inappropriate to the structural and topological complexities of an economic system, and particularly to the instability of its fundamental parameters. If the planets had been moved by angels who didn't like astronomers, Keplerian and Newtonian celestial mechanics would have been quite inappropriate. Deterministic models are unsuitable for systems in which information is an essential X

11 Preface xi element, as it is in the economic system, for information by its very definition has to be surprising. There is indeed a non-existence theorem about exact prediction in such systems. What we have to look for is persistent patterns in a world of changing parameters. To do this, a more topological analysis is needed rather than the numerical analysis which has hitherto dominated econometrics and statistics. This book is a tentative step towards an interpretation of the record in terms of topological patterns represented by a variety of graphs, from which it is clear that 'regions of time' emerge, and that at the boundaries of these regions the system changes, something which does not happen in celestial mechanics. The conclusions which emerge are less secure than the conclusions derived from simple and deterministic systems. Nevertheless they can have evidence brought to bear on them which perhaps can at least expose some of the simplistic fallacies of more conventional economic theory. The type of long-term topological analysis on which this book is based reveals some striking properties of the American economy which conventional economics and econometrics have tended to miss. One is the extraordinary nature of the disturbances to the economy produced by the Great Depression, the Second World War and the 'great disarmament' of , followed by an almost equally surprising recovery and stability from the late 1940s onwards. Another striking property of the economy that emerges is the relative insignificance of the federal government, even in the period of the New Deal. The data also suggest the unexpected effects of governmental action. During the New Deal period after 1933, the great rise in the labour movement was accompanied by a sharp decline in the proportion of labour income going to labour, illustrating the principle that it is very dangerous to generalise about the macro economy from observations of the micro. A third striking phenomenon which emerges is the strong relationship between what I have called the 'profit-interest gap', as measured by the proportion of corporate profit to corporate profit plus interest as percentages of national income. This seems to be more closely related to the level of unemployment than any other characteristic of the system and has been completely neglected by mainstream economics. This relationship makes the erosion of profit by interest which we have seen since 1950 somewhat ominous. This book is a product of some 20 years' work. It would never have been produced without a series of dedicated graduate assistants: Dr Guy M. Burgess, Dr Rich Ling, Dr Edward H. Lyell, Dr Dennis

12 xii Preface Miller and Dr Jamel Zarrouk, to all of whom I owe a great debt of gratitude. I am particularly indebted to my latest assistant, Dr Meng Chi, without whose computer graphics skills this work would never have seen the light of day. I am also greatly indebted to my administrative assistant, Mrs Vivian Wilson, whose patient work and criticism have contributed a great deal to this volume. There are some important aspects of the American economy that I have not been able to cover, partly because of the absence of data, especially in regard to capital structures, and partly because of insufficient time and resources. I am sensitive to the fact that the volume is incomplete. There is much more work to be done along this line of research and thinking. I hope, however, that this work will stimulate others to continue the processes which have produced it. KENNETH E. BOULDING Publishers' Note: After the text of this book had been passed for press, Kenneth E. Boulding died in Boulder, Colorado, on 19 March 1993 at the age of83.