Every morning I have this little battle with myself.  Will I listen to music, news, or business news?  I know I should do one of the latter two, but I really like music.  Mostly, I’m weak.  I listen to music.  Today though, I listened to the business news, and now I’m sorry I did.

Some guy was explaining the merger of Intel with McAffee, for something like a 60 percent premium.  It was all due to the sales to employee ratio, he explained, citing something like $1.2m sales to employee for Intel and only $1.0 m sales to employee for McAfee.  That is mind-boggling stupid.

There may be a reason to compare sales to employees for companies in the same business, if they are using the same technology, but comparing sales to employees for companies in different industries is worse than comparing apples to oranges.  There is no no reason that the ratio should have any significance across industries.  Asserting so not only shows the analysts incompetence, but could actually cause people to make costly mistakes.

Then, while reviewing the news on the net, I came across this.  In it, Stanley Bing asserts that businesses are hurting themselves and the economy by increasing productivity.  Instead, he says, they should be hiring excessive workers.  That is mind-boggling stupid.

If Bing wants full employment, why don’t we just repeal the entire industrial revolution?  We’d have full employment, that’s for sure.

Economic growth, and hence consumption, is the result of capital accumulation (saving, investment) and technological growth (productivity gains).  To suggest anything as a source of economic growth that doesn’t lead to investment or  productivity gains  is a waste of time at best.  At worst, it exacerbates our problems.

Can we try to get serious?