On Jan 14, 2008, at 4:21 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Compelling to me, anyway, is how *little* this current credit
> crunch looks
> like a typical Marxist over-accumulation crisis. Marx's
> precondition was a
> rising organic composition of capital (roughly, capital intensive
> growth)
> but in Europe, and I believe in the US for around ten to fifteen
> years, most
> growth has been 'job-rich' growth, predicated on low wages, while
> investment
> in new technology has been low.
Lately, yes. But there was a big burst of high-tech investment in the U.S. in the late 1990s. I think a lot of businesses were burned by the experience and resolved "never again," or at least not in this cycle. Investment has been quite low in the U.S. over the last few years. Net investment (and saving) - i.e., after stripping out depreciation - is approaching 0, in fact.
Doug