>The economists wants us to produce and consume more "stuff" because that is good for jobs and the economy.
Isn't this just the Broken Window Fallacy? All the effort spent making ten shitty products instead of one good one could have been better spent improving our lives elsewhere. If economists want this, they're bad economists.
I do see a problem in that the efficiency of manufacturing has far outstripped the efficiency of repair. If you have a fully automated assembly line and you've already put in the capital outlay, it's way cheaper to tell the machines to make another one than it is to pay someone to spend time diagnosing and fixing a faulty unit. This must surely lead to massive materials waste if nothing else.
But then you have to ask yourself, is that bad? And if it really is, why isn't that reflected in the price of the materials? Are there unaccounted externalities? If so, then we need to impose those through tax and regulation.
Modern economics no longer believes the Broken Window Fallacy is actually a fallacy. The theory goes that when inflation is low, low unemployment can be resolved by taking a tiny pinch of wealth from everyone in the form of inflation and paying a person to do what the free market considers a worthless job (like breaking and then fixing a window). This capital now transferred to the previously unemployed window repair person will then be correctly invested in the free market by their demands, the same as if they were truly gainfully employed.
We see this theory applied to roads being repaired before they truly need it, shielding regulations and subsidies for businesses the market has punished, even education subsidies that push people into fields where there is little demand.
But at least there is plenty of opportunity for graft and corruption.
I already gave really good examples. Repaving roads that are still viable through regular maintenance.
There are plenty of examples and most have to do with encouraging the replacement of goods that normally would still be considered useful. For instance all the cars that were crushed for cash, with the only requirement being they were still fully functional.
[EDIT] Keep in mind, inflation, a tax on all wealth, was being used to destroy wealth, in the interest in spurring further economic growth. It just so works out that industries and corporations closely aligned with politicians were the economic winners. Shocking, right?
Any barely justifiable war the U.S. has been in going way back. There's usually a political motivation. However, there's also companies making billion both destroying and rebuilding. On top of it, both usually create profit for them but debt for the taxpayer. Yet, it's argued to be in taxpayer's economic interest to be involved.
That's an example someone gave me a long time ago.
But doesn't that work equally well if you pay the unemployed window repairperson to fix a window that was already broken? With the added benefit that the total number of broken windows has gone down?
Our modern industrialised economy's overproduction does take a severe toll on the environment (and thus we get global climate change, severe pollution, etc.), and it'll probably hurt us down the line to have expended all these finite resources now.
Isn't this just the Broken Window Fallacy? All the effort spent making ten shitty products instead of one good one could have been better spent improving our lives elsewhere. If economists want this, they're bad economists.
I do see a problem in that the efficiency of manufacturing has far outstripped the efficiency of repair. If you have a fully automated assembly line and you've already put in the capital outlay, it's way cheaper to tell the machines to make another one than it is to pay someone to spend time diagnosing and fixing a faulty unit. This must surely lead to massive materials waste if nothing else.
But then you have to ask yourself, is that bad? And if it really is, why isn't that reflected in the price of the materials? Are there unaccounted externalities? If so, then we need to impose those through tax and regulation.