<<
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