>>Oh yes, Brad, any ideas on why has the productivity per unit of
>>capital (may Joan Robinson forgive me) in the MFP accounts
>><ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/prod3.txt> been in a long
>>downtrend, falling 8% between 1996 and 2001?
>>
>>Doug
>
>I'm surprised it hasn't fallen more. The incredible cheapness of IT
>capital goods means it becomes profitable to use them in less and
>less productive and valuable uses. My new furnace has a surge
>suppressor on it to protect its cpu, for god's sake. Twenty years
>ago I would not have believed that a furnace would ever have a cpu...
I'm not talking about the cost of capital goods, I'm talking about the alleged value of their output, which is what the BLS says is falling. Workers are supposedly getting more productive because of capital equipment, but the capital equipment itself produces ever-less-valuable output. Shouldn't capital be getting more productive rather than less, or at least staying in place? Which brings up another thing - why did MFP fall in 2001, even though labor productivity was up?
Doug