investment
By investment, economists mean the production of goods that will be used to produce other goods. This definition differs from the popular usage, wherein decisions to purchase stoc ks are thought of as investment Investment is usually the result of forgoing consumption. In a purely agrarian society, early humans had to choose how much grain to eat after the harvest and how much to save for future planting. The latter was investment. In a more modern society, we allocate our productive capacity to producing pure consumer goods such as hamburgers and hot dogs, and investment goods such as semiconductor foundries. If we create one dollar worth of hamburgers today, then our gross national product is higher by one dollar. If we create one dollar worth of semiconductor foundry today, gross national product is higher by one dollar, but it will also be higher next year because the foundry will still produce computer chips long after the hamburger has disappeared. This is how i...