C. Henwood,
On the "productivity" per worker front, are there good numbers on the effect from women entering the wage workforce since 1970? While we hear that workers are more "productive" (profitable, if not better paid) could it also be that there is a much larger per capita workforce? Anecdotally at least, it would seem that the number of women in their thirties and forties in the workforce is vastly larger now than in 1970. With more people at wage work in the prime of life, doesn't the economy have a lot more room to be "unproductive" and still look good comparatively? Also, how did Japan and the U.S. compare on percentage of women in the workforce in the seventies? Again purely anecdotally, it seems that Japanese women were taking industrial work on new capitals (electronics assembly lines, etc.) at around the same time Japan was showing up the American industrial machine.
I'm sure this had been studied somewhere, but what role does the move of female workers to modern industrial capitals have in post-war economic trends? How much has capitalism rescued itself from contradiction by simply putting more people under wage-slavery on modern capital?
peace