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"there literally are an infinite number of things that must be done. As Alchian and Allen have noted in their 1983 book Exchange and Production, the elimination of some tasks due to improved methods of productivity frees up scarce labor to do other things. That, they point out, is how an economy grows, a simple truth that seems to have escaped most of the economics profession."

This is true, your skepticism on it is wrong. And it's a strawman to allege he is talking about labor theory of value - when he explicitly stated otherwise elsewhere.

One thing to consider: If it was cheap enough, would you have a 10,000 sq ft mansion, fleet of cars, cook, gardener and personal fitness trainer? Certainly practically everyone would consume more if they had the funds; the limit is money, which in turn is based on the *value we create*. Which is a function of our productivity.
So the limit on our wealth is our productivity.

We cannot and will not grow poor and unemployed 'exporting jobs' SO LONG AS WE REMAIN A PRODUCTIVE NATION AND PRODUCTIVE POPULACE.

One thing to consider: If it was cheap enough, would you have a 10,000 sq ft mansion, fleet of cars, cook, gardener and personal fitness trainer? Certainly practically everyone would consume more if they had the funds; the limit is money, which in turn is based on the *value we create*. Which is a function of our productivity. So the limit on our wealth is our productivity. We cannot and will not grow poor and unemployed 'exporting jobs' SO LONG AS WE REMAIN A PRODUCTIVE NATION AND PRODUCTIVE POPULACE.

These are two separate things.

1st thing - me, myself -- no. Even if it was absolutely free, no strings attached...I don't want that. Me, personally, if I was not married with kids I would be absolutely delighted to have nothing more than a 1 bedroom condo with quiet neighbors in a zero crime area, close to expressways, a major airport, lots of bookstores and libraries, and lots of jobs. That would do it for me. No cook, gardener, I only need one car and I sure don't need 10K sq. feet. I am probably not representative of the "people".

2nd thing - you use the concept of productivity, and that is a slippery concept. As I mentioned with the comparison of the dirt pies and the apple pies. If I built a factory to produce millions of dirt pies really cheaply, still very few would pay money for them. Yet this would generally be considered quite productive. You, on the other hand, are implying that productivity is related to, in your terms, *value created*. And you are defining value as "that which people wish to spend money on. I agree with that. So your argument with me is????

You say -- "We cannot and will not grow poor and unemployed 'exporting jobs' SO LONG AS WE REMAIN A PRODUCTIVE NATION AND PRODUCTIVE POPULACE" but you are directly tieing productivity to value, and value to "stuff we want to spend money on". Hey, I agree with that. The issues are these:

(a) When we export those jobs we may not remain a productive nation with a productive populace.
(b) The first problem is that when we export jobs, we have unemployed people. These people are not net producers.
(c) The second problem is that unemployed people have less money to spend and therefore are consuming less -- thus lowering the demand for goods and services.
(d) The third problem is that when these people are reemployed they may be working for a lower wage and thus have less ability to consume - the demand side of the equation is going down.
(e) This leads to a net drop in demand.
(f) Henry Ford paid his workers well because they formed a good chunk of the group that bought his cars. Peasants don't buy cars.

We cannot and will not grow poor and unemployed 'exporting jobs' SO LONG AS WE REMAIN A PRODUCTIVE NATION AND PRODUCTIVE POPULACE.

The ideal would be us only exporting "excess jobs" in a full-employment environment. In other words, the affluence of the US would increase if we continually raised the skill levels of our people, created new higher-skill jobs, moved people from low-skill to high-skill jobs, and exported the low-skill jobs