> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> U.S. corporate profitability peaked in late 96/early 97, and has been
>> flat-to-down since. It makes you wonder where the alleged
>> productivity boom is paying off.
>.
>Well it paid off in the NIPA statistics, didn't it? Output per worker
>zoomed. So why didn't it show up in the profit rate? Accounting-wise,
>wouldn't it have to be because the output/capital ratio (aka "capital
>productivity) stagnated? Is that consistent with the data?
It's really hard to read these numbers these days, because the price indexes used to adjust nominal to real output for high-tech equipment are so damned bizarre, and the stuff depreciates so quickly. The slightest changes in assumptions about either can have big effects. The productivity of capital is a weird enough concept in normal times - an hour of labor is an hour of labor, but just what is a unit of capital? - but I really don't know what it means today.
Doug