Now we're getting somewhere. If you want a simple yes/no, then 'yes', a sham!
Of course it's very complicated, sorting out genuine valorization of capital from overaccumulation+financialisation. (Gar has referred to some of these problems.) But as just one (albeit crude) indicator of how badly GDP measures what's really going on, check the stagnant Genuine Progress Indicator graph at rethinkingprogress.org - for some evidence that when you start adjusting for what Harvey terms accumulation by dispossession, some big declines in actual 'genuine savings' start piling up. I'm in the midst of debating some World Bank idiots on exactly this point: http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/node/1876 ... because they can't quite believe the information about extraction that comes through their own book, Where is the Wealth of Nations.
Cheers, Patrick
Marv Gandall wrote:
> Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't the turnover on the SP 500 and other stock indices provide a measure of the degree of "creative destruction" in the US economy over the past three or four decades in comparison with earlier periods?
No, aside from turnover being a poor reflection of genuine valuation, that's the core problem: the financial economy's fluff prevents the real economy from a more rigorous devalorisation of overaccumulated capital: it's the central problem in the 'stalling' of creative destruction, because it lets firms (and capital associated with them) bubble up financial valuations without having to come to grips with the need to write off exposed real capital, bit by bit. Then comes the crash and it all happens at once (e.g. the 50% crash between Oct 2008 and March 2009).