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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 ^^^^^^ CB: I'm not sure which theory of value is being applied. But under one theory, we might expect that as the proportion of constant capital increases in relation to the proportion of variable capital, the value of the units of goods produced goes down, I think. Because the variable capital is the source of new value. In other words, as productivity goes up , or person hours per unit commodity goes down, the commodities are cheapened, aren't they ?