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Thanks for your reply.

I believe there has been some miscommunication, as I had never actually heard of George until you mentioned him. This is the book I"m referring to, which was neither written by nor mentions Henry George:

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Worldly-Philosophers-Economic-Thinkers/dp/068486214X

That being the case, I won’t reply to the substance of your comments on George’s beliefs. The only thing I would say is that the idea of private property ownership as the problem is naive in its denial of the natural inclinations of human behaviour. There is a reason they say “possession is 9/10th’s of the law” - exclusive possession to the exclusion of all others is the foundational basis of our ability to trade with one another.

"As a science, the mathematics that governs all of economics is as intractable as the cure for the disease. But we don't claim that medicine isn't science. “

I would counter that astrology and numerology both use “the maths” but that doesn’t make them scientific. While I certainly lack the mathematical skills to know conclusively for myself, my own experience and impression was certainly confirmed by the mathematician in the link I posted.

"I would say that "full" employment can never be a goal, but that buoyancy can be. One simple problem with stating "full employment" as a goal is the intractability one - how would we measure full employment? What does it mean?"

Well, even if you say it can never be a goal, the fact of the matter is that it very much is part of the current Fed mandate. As for it’s definition, this is what I am referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment

As to the issue of buoyancy, you’ll have to forgive me but I am not familiar with the concept of buoyancy in economics, and my brief search only revealed the concept of tax buoyancy, which doesn’t seem applicable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_buoyancy

"However, a more important one is actually a purely mathematical one, that can be modeled mathematically: you simply can't have complete utilization of a resource as a goal. It's out of balance. When you achieve "full" employment something must give way. Growth of some parts of the economy must stop because there is no more of the labor resource to add. This means the value of adding investment (the marginal utility of capital) goes down. And when that occurs, you have negative growth. Negative growth cascades and you have recession.”

I won’t go into full detail on this paragraph as there are more important matters to discuss, but I don’t believe your logic follows. When you posit that “full” employment will result in shrinkage of other parts of the economy, you fail to account for the dynamic nature of the system and the fact that the free market should, over time, allocate this scarce resource (labor) to its most efficient and highest use, meaning that negative growth would occur in the least viable areas of the economy while positive growth happens in more economically viable areas - the marginal utility of capital doesn’t go down, it goes up!
"However, economic buoyancy can be a goal; and when you reach closer to full employment, you can throttle back. Buoyancy is, I believe, if we take the politics out of it not such a bad goal."

Again I am not sure what you’re referring to here.

"But as it turns out, the ECB's one mandate is the one that is good for the savers and the capital accumulators.
Two issues: First, this begs the questions of what is "good" and for whom (the conservative-marxist argument and the progressive resolution) but of what is buoyant. Second, if the ECB mandate were buoyant, why do they have recessions in Europe?"

First, to answer your questions, by “good” the ECB means a stable currency that doesn’t fluctuate up and down and “for whom” means people looking to invest their capital. Second, I have never claimed the ECB mandate is buoyant, nor have I claimed that their system will somehow prevent recessions. Far from it - in any dynamic system there needs to be adjustment both upwards and downwards, so it’s not the job of the central bank to prevent recessions.

If you want an explanation of why Marx was so very wrong, I can’t implore you enough to read this article. The issue is not “labor vs. capital” it’s a matter of “debtors vs savers” or people who want “easy money” vs. those who want “hard money”. It is the best introduction to the topic of “freegold” that there is (by the way, do NOT read the wiki article on freegold, it is a debacle”.

http://fofoa.blogspot.ca/2010/07/debtors-and-savers.html
"More aptly put: If we were simply to state buoyancy is good instead of entrenched growth or "full" employment would we then check and reduce the boom-panic cycle? History seems to indicate that the answer is yes."

I am not familiar with any historical instances of the boom-panic cycle being defeated or overcome. I do, however, subscribe to the belief that the Euro has been designed in such a way that said cycle will no longer bring with it damage to the currency - economies can crash, but the currency will be fine. More on that at another time if you’d care to hear me continue rambling.