World GDP accounting is false, and GDP like production culvert does not exist at all. Its real name should be called "the total labor traded and circulated" or "the total wage labor of production capital" (the exchange rate actually represents the labor exchange ratio between the two countries, not the real comparison of production capacity).
With the application of modern national income accounting system from 65438 to 0929 and the development of macroeconomics, real GDP has become the most important concept and statistical index in economics. In mainstream economics textbooks, the first thing to teach students is that there is an index to measure the physical output-real GDP. Of course, there is also a price index indicating the overall price level, and the real GDP is nominal GDP minus the price index. In this way, all the students learned this concept, which was recognized by everyone, and then this concept became a dogma and was applied. Here is an example to fully illustrate the influence of the concept of real GDP as physical statistics on people. As we all know, in GDP statistics, the nominal GDP is obtained first, but in all national income accounting statistics tables (such as China Statistical Yearbook), there is no indicator of nominal GDP growth rate, but it tells you the actual GDP growth rate and price index. If you want to get the nominal GDP growth rate index, you can add it yourself. There is no indicator of nominal GDP growth rate, because economists believe that GDP is a measure of physical output, and nominal GDP growth rate is useless.
However, the index of real GDP is not easy to use. For example, according to the statistics of real GDP, the per capita GDP of the United States 1820 is 1600 US dollars, and China is now less than 1300 US dollars. What's more, China's GDP in Song Dynasty is equivalent to 2000 dollars. Is the living standard of China worse than that of the United States in 1820 or China in Song Dynasty? This is obviously absurd. You only need to compare the per capita output of those products in the United States or China in the Song Dynasty with that in China now, not to mention most of the things we consume now, which were not available in the United States or the Song Dynasty. As people often say, China is now the "factory of the world". Almost all consumer goods, including automobiles and civil aircraft, rank among the top in the world, and a large number of consumer goods are exported to the United States every year. How can it be lower than the living standard of America 1820?
There is an example of applying real GDP in macroeconomics textbooks. When talking about the economic growth of Japan and the four little dragons in Asia, the author writes that these countries and regions have kept the growth rate of real GDP at around 7% for 30 to 40 years through hard work and technological progress. This is no problem, but then it goes on to say that this 7% growth rate has made great changes in the per capita GDP of these countries and regions from the post-war to the 1990 s. Japanese GDP per capita increased from 130 to 30,000 dollars, South Korea from 50 dollars to 12000 dollars, and Taiwan Province Province from 80 dollars to 16000 dollars. When we put these two paragraphs together, it will be a joke, because GDP grows by 7.2% every year, 10 annual growth 1 times. How can these countries and regions grow so much in 40 years with a growth rate of 7%? Of course, the above figures are nominal GDP. Of course, in order to explain these figures, nominal GDP should also be used. For example, Japan's nominal GDP growth rate exceeded 15% in the period of high growth, while the exchange rate of the yen against the US dollar tripled, and South Korea's nominal GDP growth rate was close to 30% in the period of high growth. At present, it is impossible for economists to explain the growth of real output with real GDP, and it can also be safely said that this is a fact.
We can also cite more examples to illustrate the embarrassment brought to economists by the comparison between real GDP and real objects. For example, to explain China's GDP, we must first solve the exchange rate problem of RMB against the US dollar. Economists try to calculate by purchasing power parity. What is the result? Economists have given more than ten kinds of calculation results ranging from $2 to 14, ranging from the undervalued RMB during the Southeast Asian financial crisis to the overvalued RMB appreciation now. Can this calculation with an error of 7 times still be applied?
1930, Keynes questioned the statistical significance of this national income in his book on money. The products in GDP statistics are heterogeneous. How to add them together to represent the real output? In fact, the problem of this summation index has reached a definite conclusion in theory, that is, it can only be a single product or a steady growth (that is, all products grow in the same proportion). For example, there are two products, apples and pears. If their growth rates are all 10%, it can be said that the growth rate of output is 10%. But if the growth rate of apples is 15% and the growth rate of pears is 5%, we can't get a definite index. This question is actually very easy to understand. For example, the heterogeneous world in our real life is obviously not as clear as the production of 2 1 inch TV last year and 29-inch TV this year.
The same is true for the statistics of price index, which is only possible in a single product and in a stable state. For example, the prices of apples and pears have gone up by 10%, so it can be said that the prices have gone up by 10%. However, if the price of apples rises by 15%, the price of pears rises by 5%, or the production ratio of apples and pears changes at the same time, it is impossible for us to get a definite price index. The embarrassing result of calculating RMB exchange rate by purchasing power parity method mentioned above is an example. Mainstream economics textbooks also say that the statistics of price index may ignore the change of product quality. We can understand this problem from another angle. If the statistics of price index consider the change of product quality, the statistics of price index will be meaningless because the product quality changes too fast (such as TV sets), because as long as the quality changes, it will be regarded as a new product and cannot form a time series index with the original product. Connecting with the reality of national income accounting, it is far more difficult to count the price index in reality than in previous examples, not only the quality of products is constantly changing, but also new products are emerging one after another. You can give an example to illustrate this problem. At present, the calculation of China's price index is based on 1990, but now it is almost difficult to find products exactly the same as 1990 in the market, let alone new products that account for a large proportion of consumer spending. Obviously, the calculation of this price index is far from the statistics of physical quantities.
Generally speaking, the price index refers to the consumer price index (CPI), which is often used as the basis for calculating the actual national income. However, this consumer price index is obviously not the statistics of all products and services. For example, the price changes of capital goods are excluded, and the price changes of capital goods are represented by a separate index. Because in China's GDP statistics, capital goods account for about 30% of all products, it is obvious that GDP does not represent the change of physical quantity. As far as consumer goods are concerned, the products included in the consumer price index are not the composition of all consumer expenditures. For example, in the 1990s, household appliances accounted for a large proportion of household consumption in China, but it was not until 2000 that they were considered to be included in the calculation of price index. Obviously, it is doubtful to use this price index method to calculate the real GDP.
As can be seen from the above analysis, this kind of real GDP, as a statistical variable representing real objects, is a myth created by mainstream economics. It is called a myth because the sum statistics of this heterogeneous physical product is impossible in theory and meaningless in practical application, or the real GDP does not exist at all, but mainstream economics has made it a deeply rooted concept in people's minds and has been applied to all economic application fields.
Of course, this kind of false statistics of real GDP and price index is not useless in reality, just as this kind of real GDP and price index have always been important indicators of macroeconomic analysis, but we can easily find that economists actually add up the changes of real GDP and price index to consider macroeconomic fluctuations, but together they are nominal GDP, so why not use nominal GDP directly? Nominal GDP is the most important index we want to study, but this nominal GDP is definitely not the quantity of physical output and its monetary price unit, but has nothing to do with physical objects or technology. What is GDP?
Now let's talk about nominal GDP. In national income accounting, nominal GDP is the total value of newly produced goods and services in a certain period (such as 1 year), and the key in this definition is value. The concept of value here is the monetary price of goods and services, so it can be added up. But the nominal GDP added up in this way does not represent anything in kind, but only a concept of added value of currency transactions. For example, one method of calculating national income is the value-added method, that is, adding the added value of various enterprises together to form the total income of enterprises, which must be equal to people's total expenditure, because income and expenditure are the selling and buying of currency transactions, and they must be equal. In this way, from the perspective of total expenditure, if people consume 1 dollar, there must be 1 dollar GDP. Since GDP counts the value of currency transactions, any output (including services) that is not currency transactions will not be included in GDP. For example, the high remuneration of football stars is included in GDP, while agricultural products produced and consumed by farmers themselves will not be included in GDP as long as they are not traded in the market.
Since GDP is the added value of all currency transactions in an economy, we can use the currency transaction equation to express it: MV=PT, that is, the product of the quantity of money (M) and the speed of money circulation (V) is equal to the total value of currency transactions (T represents the physical quantity of transactions, and P represents the price), while the calculation of nominal GDP is only the added value of all currency transactions, or the added value considered from the enterprise accounting account. Therefore, when it is assumed that the total transaction amount and the added value of the enterprise maintain a fixed proportion, that is, the proportion of GDP in PT is stable, and then it is assumed that the currency circulation speed remains unchanged, and the added value of currency transactions or nominal GDP and the money supply maintain a stable proportion, that is.
The explanation of nominal GDP seems redundant, because these definitions can be found in textbooks, but we reiterate these definitions here to explain the completely different meanings from textbooks, that is, these definitions can clearly show that GDP is not physical statistics at all, but a monetary value. In mainstream economics textbooks, this monetary value is meaningless. We should discard it with the actual GDP and price level, and then use the production function to explain the actual variables. But as mentioned above, this is logically untenable. The money and nominal variables abandoned by mainstream economics are the most essential things in the market economy (or capitalist economy) where we are now, that is, the capitalist economic relations represented by these nominal variables.
In market economy or capitalist economy, one of the most typical features is competition, which is always felt in our daily life. What do people want in the competition and fight for? It's not a real thing, it's money or money, a pure symbol of value. Ordinary people are busy all day for the dream of getting rich in life. Entrepreneurs and capitalists have experienced ups and downs in the brutal commercial war, and even some government officials have lost their conscience and morality for money. What they consider and pursue is not the actual variable but the nominal variable, that is, the money itself. In such a game that makes more money than anyone else, there is GDP or nominal GDP. This nominal GDP contains a set of nominal variables composed of monetary value, including wages, interest, profits, capital, depreciation and savings, consumption, investment and other nominal variables, which constitute the financial accounts generated by enterprises to obtain profits, that is, the cost-benefit calculation of monetary value. This cost-benefit calculation is based entirely on the input and output of monetary value and does not involve any physical consideration at all. It is this that makes nominal GDP an important statistical variable. If the enterprise cost remains unchanged, the increase of nominal GDP means the increase of enterprise profit, which is the purpose of enterprise management.
We can now answer the above-mentioned summation question, that is, in the statistics of national income, how do the high incomes of those stars and singers exceed10 million add up with bread to form GDP? Why can the meager wages of bread workers add up with the incomes of stars and movie stars to form the total GDP? The reason is that they are all employed by capitalists. If the profit rate is 65,438+00%, and the capitalists pay the bread workers $65,438+000, they will sell the bread at the price of $65,438+06,5438+00, and get a profit of $65,438+00, and the salary paid to movie stars will be $654,380+00 from selling movies. Since people used the national income accounting system in 1930s, its nature and significance have not been considered theoretically. Marx's definition of productive labor seems to be the theoretical basis of national income statistics such as GDP. After criticizing Smith's definition of producing material products as productive labor, Marx pointed out that in capitalist economic relations, only labor or wage labor that can bring surplus value to capitalists is productive labor. Here, as long as Marx's labor theory of value and surplus value are measured by money, GDP and its growth can be linked. It should be pointed out that the value referred to in the labor theory of value is not specific wealth, but a kind of labor that is traded and circulated. Only use value is the specific content of wealth, and value is not, but a kind of labor enslaved by money. In the definition of realistic labor theory of value, value is a kind of labor, social economy is an exchange relationship, not a supply-demand relationship, and the atom of exchange is "labor" (value). It is a sin to produce "value" instead of a credit, just as the higher the fuel consumption of a car, the greater the sin. We can look at this problem from the following examples. For example, a house of 100 meters has an objective use value under certain conditions, and its use value will remain unchanged as long as the house is not damaged. But it used to take an ordinary worker five years' salary to buy enough, but now it takes twenty or thirty years' salary. Some people only noticed the price increase, but in fact they were cheated by money worship and fetishism. The increase of value brings about that a large number of workers' labor is swallowed up and converted into value, and the labor intensity and time increase. They have to pay more labor to get the same or similar use value as before. And more labor force either becomes the capital that can devour more labor force, or points to the luxury production of the rich in the production structure, and the specific use value has nothing to do with the increase in value. This is so-called capitalist economic growth. Obviously, this kind of GDP of capitalism is not the production of things with the same connotation, but the sum total of wage labor for producing capital. As mentioned above, when currency transactions are adopted, it is assumed that all enterprises are capitalist enterprises and all workers are employed by capitalists. Marx's definition of productive labor is consistent with the statistics of national income, that is, all products have to go through two processes of currency buying and selling, so as to make money proliferate, and there is no specific form of labor for producing surplus value at all.
Therefore, for market economy or capitalist economic relations, what is important is nominal GDP, not "real GDP" reflecting physical output. This "real GDP" does not exist at all.
Nominal variables and real variables
In mainstream economics textbooks, the statistical variables (salary, interest, profit, capital, depreciation, savings, consumption, investment) listed above are all real variables, which are related to the production function and people's consumption time preference, but these statistical variables are only nominal monetary values. However, mainstream economics has a treatment method, that is, referring to the solutions of nominal GDP and real GDP, dividing monetary wages by price level becomes real wages, and dividing nominal interest rate by price level becomes real interest rate, while manufacturers only consider real variables, without money illusion, so that these variables can be applied to production functions. As mentioned above, when these variables do not represent the real objects at all, then this abuse of mainstream economics must be full of loopholes.
Let's look at depreciation first The concept of depreciation refers to the loss of fixed assets in kind or technology, but here is a concept of value, that is, the government stipulates the proportion of fixed assets value to enterprise cost according to several categories every year. Obviously, the wear and tear of different machinery and equipment are different in technology or types, and it is impossible for the government to know. So why should the government strictly stipulate a unified depreciation ratio? There is a simple reason. If the government does not have strict regulations on this, then enterprises will certainly evade taxes. This depreciation has nothing to do with the material and mental wear and tear of fixed assets. The "accelerated depreciation" policy adopted by the US government is only a tax cut. In fact, when an enterprise makes an investment, it does not take the depreciation rate as the basis of cost calculation, even if it is completely considered from the value, but adopts the method of gross profit and payback period.
For the wages and interest that constitute the cost of an enterprise, the enterprise obviously only uses the nominal value when calculating the cost-benefit ratio. The simplest truth is that the price index is only calculated and published by the government afterwards. It is impossible for enterprises to modify the contracts signed with workers and banks before according to the price index published by the government, and the forecast of product prices can only be nominal monetary value. It is not necessary and impossible to "rationally expect" the actual variables and price levels. As long as you have a little understanding of the actual cost-benefit calculation of enterprises, you can understand this. But unfortunately, there is no such real enterprise cost-benefit calculation in mainstream economics textbooks, and there is no concept of monetary profit.
The most confusing concept here is capital. In mainstream economics textbooks, capital is brought into the production function as physical machinery and equipment, that is, Y=F(K, l) to express its productivity to physical output. However, in the national income statistics, capital is only a concept of value, which comes from the investment previously measured in money. Strangely, when using the production function analysis, mainstream economics divides the output of capital -GDP by the actual GDP by the price index method, and divides the income-interest rate of capital by the price level to become the actual interest rate, but never excludes the capital and investment in the production function from the price level to become the actual capital and investment. Obviously, there is a logical error in the calculation of this production function, that is, the nominal value is confused with the actual value. Similarly, in the production function, labor is measured by actual value, while capital is the nominal value without dividing by the price level. How can we work out their respective marginal product? What does it mean to put the nominal value and the actual capital-labor ratio (K/L) together? This logical confusion leads to more serious thinking confusion in actual economic analysis. For example, in practice, developing countries with low capital-labor ratio are adopting technologies with high capital-labor ratio, while in the United States, there is a "Leontief paradox" in exporting labor-intensive products. It can be said that as long as this production function is used to analyze practical problems, it will lead to this paradox.
Retained value will eventually form capital, but is capital a machine in the production function of mainstream economics? It is not difficult to find an explanation in the statistics. According to statistics, about 65% of the total capital in the United States is real estate, which has remained stable for a long time. Because the investment rate in the United States is stable for a long time, it means that the capital increase or capital accumulation of investment transformation is only the appreciation of real estate or the rise of land prices, not the increase of machines at all. In this way, capital is just that piece of land, and capital accumulation is just that people buy that piece of land (investment) at a higher price. Of course, in addition to land, there is 35% capital. Are they machines? The answer is still no, most or more than 50% of the remaining 35% capital is composed of intangible assets such as patents and trademarks, and the value of machines only accounts for a small proportion of the total capital. Textbooks always use statistics to show that the capital-labor ratio in the United States is 40 times that in China, but as we all know, machines are intermediate products of labor production. The stock of machines used in the United States was only produced in the past 20 years, and all the previous machines were scrapped. There are only a few million industrial workers in the United States, but there are hundreds of millions of surplus laborers in China. If capital is machines, China can use these people to produce these machines in the United States 1 year (of course, we should know the production technology of these machines). In fact, China is now producing machines at this speed and becoming a factory in the world, but it is unlikely to catch up with the United States in terms of capital value, because it means that China's investment and money supply will increase several times faster than now. Of course, the possibility of double appreciation of the RMB exchange rate is also ruled out here.
Looking at the concept of investment again, in mainstream economics textbooks, investment means the formation of fixed assets or machines. But in reality, investment is just a kind of monetary expenditure, which can be used to buy various goods and services (such as stocks and stars). Different from consumption, the purpose of investment is to form capital stock in value in order to obtain profits. For example, according to the definition of textbooks, Motorola's investment in China is to transport American machines to China, but in fact, most of Motorola's investment is not to transport machines to China, but to buy land in China to hire people to build factories and hire managers and workers from China for production. The "machine" it brings is just a chip, and Motorola's investment is obviously only in dollars issued by Bank of America, not machines.
Using simplified methods, we can divide the goods and services we invest in into three categories, namely, hiring workers, buying machinery and equipment and directly buying the original capital stock; These three categories can also be simplified into two categories: hired workers and capital stock, because machines are only produced by manufacturers who hire workers and buy the original capital stock, so they can be "restored"; Further simplification, the use of the aforementioned real estate accounts for a large proportion of the total capital, and we can understand the capital stock as a piece of land with a fixed amount. The above simplification can make us clearly see the significance of investment. As an increased monetary expenditure, when investment is used to hire workers, it will increase the wages of workers and the cost of enterprises at the same time. When it is used to buy the original capital stock or land, it will cause the price of capital stock or land to rise. The appreciation of this capital stock will become the profit of the enterprise, and the profit will come from the land price increase caused by the new investment in the original land. Therefore, from the physical point of view, investment may also produce machinery, but from the value point of view, investment has nothing to do with machinery, but with wages and profits as value quantities. According to the labor theory of value, value is a kind of labor, and social and economic exchange labor, while profit or surplus value is surplus labor that can be realized in the form of money in exchange, rather than specific surplus "wealth" (use value). On the whole, the loss or profit is essentially the same. Are labor consumption or surplus. Because enterprises pursue value and surplus value, rather than use value, Karl Marx also regards enterprises as the product of class struggle. The so-called value of capitalism here is money, which is not the default value definition of ordinary people subconsciously. The value definition of labor theory of value refers to this monetary relationship of capitalism, that is, value (money) is a kind of "labor", not a specific "use value" (the default value definition of ordinary people's subconscious).
Finally, look at savings and consumption. In mainstream economics textbooks, the ratio of savings to consumption depends on people's time preference. For example, there is a product-mung bean sprouts, which will grow a little tomorrow if you don't eat it today. What is long is the marginal productivity of capital, which is the interest rate compared with the original bean sprouts. Then, when people eat bean sprouts depends on their time preference, that is, the growth speed of bean sprouts and their patience. According to this theory, economists have created various consumption function models to explain macroeconomic changes, such as life cycle hypothesis and intergenerational overlap model. However, savings and consumption in national income accounting are just a sum of money, or the ratio of the money people get in a certain period to the money they don't spend. It can also be said that people spend money, save or invest in order to make more money, and they don't consume a physical product according to time preference at all. Keynes put forward the paradox of thrift and the theory of consumption function and income determination based on the high savings rate of the rich in monetary theory and general theory, but Keynes's consumption function theory was completely misinterpreted by mainstream economics and was used to explain the real economy. Take the reality of China as an example. Since 1997, China's economy has experienced a recession in which the economic growth rate has decreased and the unemployment rate has increased. One of the important features is the sharp drop in consumption. Many economists in China explain this point according to the consumption function theory of mainstream economics, that is, the decline of consumption is due to the change of people's consumption tendency caused by the reform of social welfare system, such as saving money to pay for old-age care, medical care, house purchase and children's education. But this seemingly reasonable and realistic statement is very problematic. We leave the complicated theoretical analysis behind, and here we just point out an important empirical fact, that is, in the long-term national income statistics of the United States, the consumption tendency is quite stable. Has the American social welfare system remained unchanged for over 100 years? The answer is obviously no, not only the social welfare system in the United States has undergone tremendous changes, but also the technology (such as the new technological revolution) and people's cultural concepts. For example, the older generation of Americans are desperately saving money, but today's young people are heavily in debt, but strangely, the statistical consumption tendency has not changed. Indeed, these technical factors will affect people's consumption time preference or time choice, but they can only change the relative price (futures price) of commodities, but can't change the consumption and savings variables of money in national income accounting statistics, because these variables only represent the monetary value of people's social relations, and have nothing to do with technology or time preference.
Since consumption and savings are both monetary values, we can explain the above problems from the perspective of money. If it is assumed that people's savings are kept as bank deposits (which is true in the statistics of money supply), can people take out 10% more bank deposits as savings for consumption? Obviously impossible, which will inevitably lead to the bankruptcy of commercial banks; Similarly, people can't save more than 10% like the increased deposits of banks without corresponding investment loans, which will also lead to the closure of commercial banks. When people try to do this, it will inevitably make commercial banks change the money supply, thus causing changes in the income level, and preventing people from trying to change the ratio of money consumption to savings, or adjusting through economic fluctuations. This is Keynes's income determination theory and thrift paradox. For the decline of China's consumption since 1997, the important reason is that the income distribution has been seriously polarized since 199 1, or the proportion of wages in national income has dropped obviously, while the change of consumption tendency is secondary.
The above analysis of statistical variables in national income accounting shows that these statistical variables expressed in monetary value have nothing to do with technical relations such as physical objects, production functions and time preferences mentioned in mainstream economics textbooks, but represent capitalist economic relations, or are used to express this special competitive game that makes more money than others.
Therefore, this GDP growth is important for capitalism or market economy. As long as it does not grow, capitalism will be paralyzed, but the so-called GDP of producing culverts simply does not exist. In fact, its name should be called "the sum of paid labor for producing capital" or "the sum of labor traded and circulated". An extreme example is that the value of a completely military-controlled society (defined by the value of labor theory of value) will be zero, and GDP as the total value will also be zero, which people who regard it as a production culvert will never understand.