--- Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> At 11:36 AM 2/12/2008, andie wrote:
>
> >The reason a trip to grandma's house is not
> >productive of SV is that it occurs outside the
> market
> >economy and is not done for wages to make profits.
>
>
>
> So you're talking about the person taking the trip,
> right? The trip
> itself is productive if it's taken on an airplane,
> no?
[WS:] Not quite. The airline income from that trip, or rather the diffrenece between its sales of tickets and intermediate consumption (cost of fuel, airport fees etc.)is the value added (which is SV or profit + compensation of employees, I suppose). By the same virtue, if you drive to grandma's because a family member living in a different househould paid you to do so, the value of that payment less your intermdiate consumption (cost of gas, etc.) is the value added which is also the SV, since you are your own employee.
However, if you drive to grandma's on your own account, without being paid to do so, you cannot claim the value of your time to be "productive" in the sense of adding value to the economy, because while having an economic value, it occured solely for your own consumption in the household. By definition, this is outside the market - albeit there is a push from feminists to include such within-household activities in the production boundaries i.e. count them as the creation of value (i.e. add their imputed value to the GDP).
Wojtek
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