Nuts and berries

JayHecht at aol.com JayHecht at aol.com
Mon Dec 14 08:23:40 PST 1998


In a message dated 98-12-14 11:16:09 EST, you write:

<<

And what does it all tell you, Rakesh? What do you gain from all that

tedious work? Those are sincere, not rhetorical, questions.

>> Well for one - if you accept Shaikh & Tonak's estimates - the rate of surplus value extraction did not slowdown, even though so-called measured productivity decelerated after 1973. Moreover, the ratio of "unproductive/productive" workers has risen dramatically since the 1970s. Bottom line: you can't just blindly accept NIPA data to "prove" or "disprove" Marx/marxian claims. You need to reconceptualize the accounting apparatus and do a shitload of tedious scut work (which Anwar and Ahmet have done) to get a handle on the empirial macroeconomic claims that Marx put forward.

Jason



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