[lbo-talk] An Orgy of Speculation?

brad babscritique at gmail.com
Sat Mar 5 08:47:39 PST 2011


Yes, Wren. He is singing a slightly different tune in that new article then he did previously. Even though he still wants to judge all mfg profits by the very peak year, rather than compare the 1982-1997 era to a longer-term average When a longer-term comparison is done, it shows the '82-97 era to be far above average, and the '65-82 era as only slightly off of historical average rates of profitability.

I also think the attempt to separate financial from non-financial as I stated in my last post leads far too many analysis off track. It makes it into some sort of competitive comparison. You claim yourself that finance aided production through restructuring. However, you then come back to try to argue that they somehow are at odds with each other.


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Wren:

But a speed-up of this sort can be a medium-term strategy at best; there has to be some kind of upper bound on how tightly you can squeeze labor before diminishing returns set in.


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Really? How so? Are you claiming that there is a limit that is a physical limit or a political one? Does this limit rest on workers saying enough and doing something or is it that at some point this squeeze undermines demand and impacts profits? Isn't the whole history of neoliberalism and the most recent use of state budgets to attack workers an example that the claim of a economic or physical limit exists doesn't hold water.

Brad



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