[OPE-L:5483] Re: Luxury Goods and the Rate of Profit

Ajit Sinha (ecas@cc.newcastle.edu.au)
Thu, 18 Sep 1997 02:14:32 -0700 (PDT)

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I'm sorry, I forgot to respond to one part of Paolo Giussani's post in my
last reply.
At 08:46 15/09/97 -0700, Paolo Giussani wrote:
>New goods as nonbasics
>
>In the same post, Ajit Sinha added
> " A novel product would of course be non-basic. However, to say that all
>the
>products or a large part of products that come out of every production
>cycle are novel products would not be a very meaningful proposition. In
>such situation it would be hard to work on any REPRODUCTION schema. "
>
>Since the slightest change in usevalue is enough to make a product a novel
>product, looking at what happens every day I feel comfortable to state that
>a very large part of products that come out of each different 'production
>cycle' (Sinha uses this quite mysterious expression) are novel products,
>and thus nonbasic products. Sinha however think this can't be a 'very
>reasonable proposition', only because accepting it would make very hard to
>work any reproduction schema. I fear I have to remark this a kind of
>footbal fan way of thinking: if my team loses then soccer no longer can be
>considered a good game. He should have said instead: "... only because
>accepting it would make very hard to work out any reproduction schema
>WITHIN A SIMULTANEIST FRAMEWORK", since there is no problem in
>incorporating continuous technical innovation within a nonsimultaneist
>formalism as this is not founded upon a distinction between basics and
>nonbasics.
>
>With esteem,
>Paolo Giussani
______________

Since Sraffa's equations are equations for industries or sectors rather
than firms, they obviously contain differentiated goods. No slight change
will make every product 'non-basics', that's simply silly. By the way, you
all anti "simultanist" people out there Should know that the Sraffian
reasoning is more sequentialist than simultanist. Your choice of
terminology or name calling only betrays your lack of knowledge of the
theory you are criticizing. Cheers, ajit sinha
>