A problem within economics

The equation for Net Domestic Product is:

NDP = GDP - Depreciation

That depreciation is for Capital Goods like industrial robots and 18-wheel trucks. Machines used to make money.

The Laws of Physics do not care about economics. They do not change style year after year. Adam Smith and Karl Marx never saw a consumer economy where the peons bought cars and refrigerators and microwave ovens. Our economic thinking has been set by ideas from before WWII.

It should be:

NDP = GDP - (Dcap + Dcon)

Dcap is Depreciation of Capital Goods
Dcon is Depreciation of durable consumer goods

The concept of GNP/GDP was developed during the Depression and war production is what really ended the Depression. What was there to replace the Germans and Japanese blowing **** up causing rapid depreciation?

So we got planned obsolescence after the war with economists ignoring the depreciation of all of the consumer trash. When we buy more trash to replace what we had to throw away it gets added to GDP and called growth. And we got televisions to sell the American Dream.

There were 200,000,000 cars in the US in 1994. If we guesstimate $1500 of depreciation per car that comes to $300,000,000,000 for one year. A bit much for economists to say nothing about year after year.

 

Karl Marx named Capitalism and he never saw a consumer economy where Joe Blow could own a car. In 1890 they were worrying about the cities being drowned in horse manure.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/

Technology changes economics and most people don't comprehend the significance of the changes. I asked a PhD economist from the University of Chicago to explain how an automobile engine worked. He couldn't even start. Like he is going to figure out planned obsolescence in any technology. ROFL