Most people think about dollars first when they think about what they earn when they produce.  Most people will also then consider the work they do at home knowing that this work adds value to their lives.  Some people will then begin to consider all the work they do make their computer and gadgets entertain them.  That’s value.  And values that aren’t expressed in dollars may have become a substantial portion of economic growth — perhaps even the majority (I am not claiming to know).  In particular, the internet brings us tremendous quantities of asymptotically free goods and services.

Though I do feel concern over whether a good or service is free when it comes with the controls of people who track us, advertise to us, and do what they can to manipulate us.  We pay.  We just don’t have the best sense of what we pay.

In some sense this should give us greater confidence in the recovery of our economy.  However, it also means that we should see some wages retreat or grow much more slowly, but wages are sticky (it’s hard to make them go down).  With government salaries going up so much more quickly than those in the private sector, will we see proportional job losses in the private sector so that total dollar wages (for my lack of an economics term) grows continually at a snail’s pace?

To some degree this question highlights the current battles over teacher salaries/benefits.  If everyone else is struggling to learn this new economy of asymptotically free goods, shouldn’t we assume that teachers are/must learn how to handle it also?

Somehow I don’t expect that union bosses are going to think too hard on this point.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 at 11:53 am and is filed under Economics, Mathematics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.