Announcing New York City’s newly “balanced” budget back in June, Mayor Zohran Mamdani invoked the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: “If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.”
Socialists understand their own version of economics. As socialism becomes full blown communism, those in power live like kings. Everyone else owns nothing and is unhappy.
Sorry for the late comment. I missed this article at the time.
"Income is a direct function of how much we can produce."
It's helpful to think of income not as a *function of* what we produce, but simply as *what we produce* itself (minus any reproductive consumption involved). You could call it "raw" income.
For example, if Alice makes a table from 3 planks, her raw income is:
+ table - 3 planks
If she then sells the table to Bob for $100, her raw income is:
+ $100 - 3 planks
Bob's raw income is:
+ table - $100
This is the only coherent approach I know for defining income, and has some extremely desirable properties, most notably linearity (the whole is the exact sum of the parts). It makes clear that production is the *only* way to generate aggregate income.
Socialists understand their own version of economics. As socialism becomes full blown communism, those in power live like kings. Everyone else owns nothing and is unhappy.
The socialist miracle will continue until Mamdani runs out of other people's money.
Well, at least they are consistent
Sorry for the late comment. I missed this article at the time.
"Income is a direct function of how much we can produce."
It's helpful to think of income not as a *function of* what we produce, but simply as *what we produce* itself (minus any reproductive consumption involved). You could call it "raw" income.
For example, if Alice makes a table from 3 planks, her raw income is:
+ table - 3 planks
If she then sells the table to Bob for $100, her raw income is:
+ $100 - 3 planks
Bob's raw income is:
+ table - $100
This is the only coherent approach I know for defining income, and has some extremely desirable properties, most notably linearity (the whole is the exact sum of the parts). It makes clear that production is the *only* way to generate aggregate income.
More on my substack here: https://www.economics21st.com/p/income-2