[FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Gary Schiltz]

I hope it didn't sound like I was yelling at you, Nick :-)  Given the state
of the economy here in northern South America, your question a little too
USA-centric. And my response was obviously from a different perspective. I
actually don't know what the state of the US economy is right now. For
example, are a large percentage of the populace who have to be physically
at their job site back to work now? I'm not talking about paper pushers
(knowledge workers) who can work remotely. Are farmers in the field
planting or harvesting crops? Are there enough people tending to the power
grid? the water systems? Basic stuff. That's the economy that I'm concerned
with.

On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 11:34 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
>
>
> I have asked this question before and nobody has responded (for clear and
> good reasons, no doubt) but I thought I would ask it again.  What exactly
> is this economy we are bent on reviving?  What exactly is the difference in
> human activity between our present state and a revived economy.  We can go
> to bars and concerts and football games?  Is that the economy we are
> reviving?  It seems to me that the difference between a “healty” economy
> and our present status consists possibly in nothing more than a lot of
> people frantically rushing about doing things they don’t really need to
> do?
>
>
>
> You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats were
> put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and
> protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above
> two hundred.  Infant mortality, etc., was appalling.  Carnage.  In the same
> space, a competent lab breeding organization could have kept a population
> of tens of thousands.
>
>
>
> Don’t yell at me.  What fundamental proposition about economics do I not
> understand?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
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