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In economics, a demerit good is "a good or service whose consumption is considered unhealthy, degrading, or otherwise socially undesirable due to the perceived negative effects on the consumers themselves"; [1] [2] [3] it could be over-consumed if left to market forces of supply and demand.
Overproduction is the accumulation of unsaleable inventories in the hands of businesses. Overproduction is a relative measure, referring to the excess of production over consumption. The tendency for an overproduction of commodities to lead to economic collapse is specific to the capitalist economy. In previous economic formations, an abundance ...
Other possible rationales for treating some commodities as merit (or demerit) goods include public-goods aspects of a commodity, imposing community standards (prostitution, drugs, etc.), immaturity or incapacity, and addiction. A common element of all of these is recommending for or against some goods on a basis other than consumer choice. [4]
Mathematically, social marginal cost is the sum of private marginal cost and the external costs. [3] For example, when selling a glass of lemonade at a lemonade stand, the private costs involved in this transaction are the costs of the lemons and the sugar and the water that are ingredients to the lemonade, the opportunity cost of the labor to combine them into lemonade, as well as any ...
goods and services. Their newfound sense of confidence and productive purpose will inevitably lead to new supply-side expectations of higher price thresholds (and living standards – we are not the only people that like nice things). Enter stupidity-in-real terms. Commodity critics are failing to factor in that the rules to the game have changed.
Edgeworth's original two-axis depiction was developed into the now familiar box diagram by Pareto in his 1906 Manual of Political Economy and was popularized in a later exposition by Bowley. The modern version of the diagram is commonly referred to as the Edgeworth–Bowley box. [6]
Turchin argued that elite overproduction due to the expansion of higher education was also a factor behind the turmoil of late 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2010s. [34] By the 2010s, it became clear that the cost of higher education has ballooned over the previous three to four decades—faster than inflation, in fact—thanks to growing demand. [4]
The other side of over-production is the over-accumulation of productive capital: more capital is invested in production than can obtain a normal profit. The consequence is a recession (a reduced economic growth rate) or in severe cases, a depression (negative real growth, i.e. an absolute decline in output).