Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jun 1999, Greg Nowell wrote:
>
> > Commenting on my own comment, I forgot to mention that "predatory dumping" is
> > not, to my knowledge, discussed by List, who, however, says some extremely
> > sophisticated things about price levels and the solvency of hte banking system.
> > So your reference to List makes me wonder whether you are in fact familiar with
> > the argument I'm making. Check out those graphs in Machine that Changed the
> > World and tell me domestic demand doesn't affect the Japanese auto industry.
>
> Eh? List does indeed talk about how foreign imports can trash your
> manufacturing sector (one of his examples is the crushing of the Indian
> textile industry by the Brits, via some mightily effective trade
> policies). The problem is, List's stuff is very nebulous about the whole
> role of consumption, his model is the alliance of Iron and Rye, i.e. a
> kind of co-cartel between agrarian and industrial groups.
>
> And yes, domestic demand does indeed affect the Japanese auto
> industry -- but demand in the USA and the rest of Asia, and not just
> within Japan, proper. In general, "Machine" suffers from a curious
> hyperfixation on the magic of outsourcing -- their productivity stats
> concentrate on final assembly, and make the US and EU producers look much
> more inefficient than they actually were or are, and they fail to note
> that Japan's surge also had lots to do with US stupidity (or rather, the
> rentier policy of letting the American industrial base go to hell, so as
> to stomp real wages and smash unions) rather than productivity per se. But
> that's a different issue, of course...
>
> -- Dennis
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
Fax 518-442-5298