🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 10 Jul 1995, James Barney Marsh wrote:

>         Personal saving, however, is a different matter.  Until the
> end of the 80s (I haven't seen more recent figures), the downturn
> in personal saving was matched by an upturn in personal consumer
> durable purchases.  This is the nearest thing in household production
> that we have to an investment.  Supposedly the automobiles and
> household gagets will ease life's burdens and make it possible to
> save money that would be spent on other services if we didn't have
> the gagets.  These durables are supposed to make the household more
> productive and therefore yield a rate of return, not easily measured,
> but analogous to that which Linus mentioned.


Though we do buy more durable goods these days, since their
prices have not risen as quickly as the prices of nondurables
and services, we actually spend a SMALLER percent of our budget
on durables. Twenty years ago durables goods expenditures
represented 14.0% of consumption expenditures, but last year
that figure was down to 12.8%. Furthermore, over the past
twenty years consumption spending has taken on an increasing
share of GDP, from 64.6% in 1975 to 68.7% last year. Thus a
larger share of GDP is going toward nondurables and services
consumption.

In Japan consumption was 56.7% of GDP in 1991, and durables
purchases represented 9% of consumption expenditures.

linus yamane