From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sun Sep 10 2006 - 07:34:35 EDT
Hi Paul, Just quickly, I'm aware that assets and liabilities are equal in a balance sheet consolidation - what I was thinking of though was the aggregate "net worth" of financial assets, expressed as a sum of capital owned at a balance date (a "stock value"), and this net worth is usually expressed as a non-zero number unless I am very much mistaken. This is often difficult to measure - although various countries nowadays try to measure the "net worth" of at least households in the national economy, this is often a total net worth, not differentiated according to *asset types* held. The American IRS provides tables for example on "All Top Wealthholders by Size of Net Worth" where financial assets are tabulated separately: http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=96426,00.html but this does not cover the whole population obviously. You can also get IRS data on the "net worth" of corporations, but there is no separate treatment of financial assets and physical assets. Tax-reported assets and liabilities may of course vary from the true situation. In the UK, however, more relevant data is readily available which you can consult for yourself. Thus, the Statistics Office reported on 23 July 2005 as follows: "The total value of the UK at the end of 2004 was £5.8 trillion. Latest estimates from an Office for National Statistics (ONS) report, Capital Stocks, Capital Consumption and Non-Financial Balance Sheets 2005, show that at the end of last year the total net worth of the UK including financial assets was £5,843 billion - an increase of £404 billion on the previous year. Today's report publishes tables showing the market value of the UK's non-financial assets - a measure of the country's wealth. The detailed figures show that the most valuable asset continues to be housing with a total value of £3,427 billion - up 12 per cent on the previous year and 59 per cent of total wealth. Of this, £3,221 billion belongs to households and non profit organisations - around 55 per cent of the nation's wealth in 2004." www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/capital0705.pdf So from the British data, you can separate out the "stock" of physical assets and the "stock" of financial assets for the whole economy. ... and later: "Total net worth of the UK including financial assets at end 2005 was £6,012 billion. This is an increase of £119 billion on the previous year. Detailed figures of the country's wealth show that the most valuable asset continues to be housing with a total value of £3,575 billion. This is up 4 per cent on the previous year and is equivalent to 59 per cent of the nation's wealth. The value of housing stock belonging to the household and non-profit organisations sector was worth £3,356 billion." www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=479 I do not have the relevant publications available here just now to make an analysis. But anyway, this is just to say there are several measures available in macroeconomic statistics to assess the role of the international transfer of wealth in the accumulation process. No Marxist that I know of has tried to establish what the gains and losses are in this respect though. Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Sep 30 2006 - 00:00:06 EDT