Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 11:50:37 -0500 (EST) X-Sender: bhandari at mmp.princeton.edu Message-Id: <v02130502630be94a924d@[128.112.71.24]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-mailer: Eudora Pro 2.1.3 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com From: bhandari at mmp.Princeton.EDU (Rakesh Bhandari) Subject: Re: productivity miracle or workhouse?
>I've read accounts of Marxian rates of profit too. Shaikh says the
>U.S. rate is going up.
>Doug
Yet Doug you have also demonstrated that the upward spike primarily from lower interest rates. Lower US interest rates perhaps a partial consequence of foreign appetite for dollars, i.e. the desire to invest in fairly safe and stable assets in the world's most liquid market. That is, lower interest rates here partially a consequence of instability on a global scale which may be a consequence of FROP on a global scale. Lower interest rates may also be in part due to less capital crowd out from diminished govt bond issue.
Moreover, as I suggested in my comments on Brenner, the upward movement in US profit rate cannot be understood outside the development of the intl div of labor. The upward spike follows from the elimination of excess capacity not in US industry as a whole, a la Brenner, but mostly in the US based consumer goods industry subject to foreign competition (see James Galbraith). Which has left the US with a more streamlined, capital goods-heavy and/or R&D-intensive and profitable mfg sector (see recent volume by David Mowery and Richard Nelson on industrial leadership in what Galbraith would call K industries). All this suggests however that the profit rate cannot be understood in terms of national statistics; they may be near worthless.
Finally profit can be improved simply by the reorganisation of existing assets, i.e., the record centralisation of capital noted by Uchitelle in Sunday's NYT. Such centralisation is a counter-tendency to FROP. See Grossmann
yrs, rakesh