Barkley writes:
> And is it not true that the growth rate was higher in
>1996 than in 1995 and still higher in 1997, in short, it is
>accelerating?
As someone who embraces a Schumpeterian theory of long waves, Barkley, you
shouldn't be concerned with real GDP numbers. More apt would be
productivity measures, preferably labor productivity rather than bogus
"total factor productivity" stats. Of course, here there is argument too:
have the recent surges in labor productivity growth been merely a normal
short-cyclical uptick or the sign that the long-term trend has returned to
being similar to the "good old days" (GOD) of the 1950s & 1960s? Here of
course, we get into the debate about "why hasn't the
communication/information technical revolution paid off very well?" that
the mainstream economists are chewing over.
But pretend (ooops, I mean "assume") that there _is_ a supply-side
renaissance going on. Maybe we can learn from the experience of previous
supply-side shifts. Back around 1919, one can find that US labor
productivity stats show a kink, an upward ratchet of the labor productivity
growth rate. That kind of "kink" fits with ideas of long waves or other
theories of stages of capitalist development.
The problem is that 10 years later the supply surge encountered a demand
debacle. As the French "Regulationists" say, the accumulation regime didn't
have a mode of regulation that would allow stable growth. Or to paraphrase
James Tobin, god gave us two eyes, one for supply and one for demand. Many
Schumpeterians close one of those eyes, ignoring the demand side.
On the demand side, GDP numbers play a role, though we shouldn't be looking
as simply US statistics. Just as back in 1929, the US economy's health is
highly dependent on the health of the rest of the world.
in pen-l solidarity and without gratuitous use of academic titles,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"Dear, you increase the dopamine in my accumbens." -- words of love for the
1990s.
