682 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - 28
voN NEUMANN’s assumption of a subsistence wage rate, and
therefore of constant coefficients at which workers can reproduce
themselves, and to replace it with the assumption that the
wage rate increases in time pari passu with productivity. Now
we may ask the question: Is it possible to define, at each point
of time, a maximum technically possible and uniform rate
of growth in the von NEUMANN sense? The answer is yes. But
what is the meaning of this maximum uniform rate of growth?
It means that, of all possible compositions of total production
which follow a uniform rate of growth, there is one at which
this uniform rate of growth is maximum. There is something
here to which we do not seem to have paid enough attention.
The point could have been made earlier with direct reference
to the original voN NEUMANN model but it becomes more
striking when technical progress is considered. The von NEU-
MANN maximum rate of growth entails a very definite com-
position of production, a composition which comes to be de-
termined entirely on technical ground. It means, for example,
that to achieve that maximum rate total production will have
to be composed by a very high proportion of those commo-
dities which are easier to produce.
Therefore, unless the members of the community are in-
different to the composition of the basket of goods they con-
sume (which would be an absurd assumption to make), i.e.,
unless the members of the community do not care about
whether the national product is mainly composed, let us say,
of bread and butter or of juke-boxes, or of nuclear spear-
head rockets, the pattern of growth defined by von NEUMANN’S
maximum can by no means be called an optimum pattern
of growth.
The argument may perhaps be better developed if we
follow three successive steps. First of all, let me make the
obvious assertion that the members of any society are in-
terested in producing the type of goods thev like best and
10] Pasinetti - pag. 112
