True, the turnover time for this means of production is highly susceptible to shortening due to technological innovation (hence the capitalist fetish for "high tech"). However, innovation and its practical application itself is highly susceptible to a dearth of investment capital, so we should see a reduction in the effect of innovation under these same conditions (a gap in the pipeline of new producer products should appear). Since the financial press keeps saying this present situation is "unprecedented" in the post WW2 period (but I wonder), it would be interesting to detect if this happens (or explain why it didn't).
And, speaking of world war, this is exactly how an excess of producer goods was "disposed of" in the good old days. Note that the world wars occurred in pre-Keynesian effective demand times, which constantly featured periodic over accumulation of producer goods.
And consumer debts' effect on demand is the other shoe waiting to fall in the US economy. Perhaps the first domino in a fall in effective demand has keeled over with the stock market, which by itself mainly affects upper middle class demand right now.
-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA
At 02:34 PM 3/22/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Keep in mind that the former commentary is focused on tech, precisely where
>the capital overinvestment has taken place. The reverberations throughout
>the larger economy are hard to predict. (Though note the deterioration in
>the Dow last week.) In that space there is the lurking danger of consumer
>debt and of the current political climate which favors tighter money and
>more takeaways from the working class, both tendencies serving to
>exacerbate whatever recessionary forces have now come into play.
>
>Without an organized working class, it looks grim. (I know that sounds like
>some commie refrain, but it's true.)
>
>Joanna