[OPE-L:3463] Re: Re: valuation of imports

[Paul Cockshott <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 17:43 07/06/00 -0400, you asked about units of account for i/o tables.

Ideally I think the unit should be the customs and currency union.
The Euro zone is such a unit, as is the federation of the united states
of america.

What do you mean by the initials SNLT?

The point about using only US labour inputs in computing values
in the US is that only such labour is
a)  freely disposable accross the range of all economic activities in
     the country - many services for example can not be produced
     abroad. The labour of its citizens is the basic productive resource
     of the country.
b) accross the US population there is a given average level of skill
    and productvity, this will not be the same as the average level of
    skill in other countries

c) It relates to what value flow accounts are. Value flow accounts are
    by dimensional analysis person years per year, thus == persons.
   Value flow accounts are an image of the distribution of social
   labour within the country.

   This is a very basic point of dimensional analysis but some contributors
    to the list do not seem to have grasped its implications yet.

Given that what we are concerned with is the distribution of social labour
one has to impute numbers of people to the flows of different imports.
The only sensible way to convert a flow of imports into a number of people
is to look at the number of people who have to provide the exports
needed to purchase the imports.

On the other points you raise, in looking at methodology one has at
first to assume the statistics are accurately produced. Also in formulating
a general theory one has to abstract form peculiarities of individual countries
and their national accounting practices.