Re: [OPE-L] [Jurriaan on] Estimated percentage share of public sector employment

From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon Oct 10 2005 - 09:12:00 EDT


> It's interesting to correlate this data with other official variables,
> such as GDP per capita and exports/GDP, and you will see clearly
> that there is no real relationship between the wealth or productivity
> of a population,  and the size of its public sector in employment terms.

Jurriaan:

Thanks for the statistics and much other useful information in recent
messages.

I don't think that your suggestion to correlate this data with GDP/capita
would tell us anything of significance.  While it's easy enough to do (by
dividing the GDP by the total population), this statistic is pretty
meaningless.  If one wants to look at wealth or productivity,  GDP/capita
won't tell us anything since it is at a level of aggregation in which
income and wealth differences don't show up.  We  can not assume that
this statistic can tell us anything meaningful about productivity since data
relevant to that subject can not treat everyone regardless of whether they
are part of the working population,  part of the industrial reserve army, or
part of the capitalist class as if they are all  productive.

In solidarity, Jerry


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