Jim, Okay. Would you give any credence to Angus Maddison's data sets? Assume that the observed is the golden-rule growth rate (ceiling for the profit rate, cf. Duncan Foley or Ed Phelps or whichever growth economics textbook you like). Take the U.S. from its inception after the American Revolution. What do you get?
Preponderance of evidence and prima-facie theoretical grounds are all in support of the FRP. It is not airtight, and it is a testimonial to Marx's power of intuition that he stated it as a "tendency." And the evidence I'm alluding is under the implicit assumption that the wage share is constant. If you add working people progressively getting a bigger piece of the value-added pie, as a secular trend, then the FRP must obtain. My 2 cents. On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 10:30 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > Initially, I said: >> I don't accept the Shaikh-Mandel-et al dogma that capitalism suffers from a >> secular fall in the rate of profit, so I don't see how that's relevant.< > > Then, in response to Julio's "look at the evidence," I said: >>What evidence? It depends on your starting and end points.< > > Everyone I've read accepts the fact -- shown by Julio's data -- that > the US profit rate (and that in most rich countries) fell between the > 1950s/1960s and the 1970s & after (with no recovery to the 1950s/1960s > levels). But, as I said above, it depends on your _starting and end > points_. The 1950s/1960s -- Julio's starting point -- represent what > many call the "Golden Age" and Tom Michl has called "the Great > Exception." It was a period of extraordinarily high profit rates, so > it shouldn't be any surprise that the profit rate should fall. Julio, > how do you deal with the fact that the profit rate _rose_ going into > the 1950s/1960s? > > If we want to test the theory that "capitalism suffers from a secular > fall in the rate of profit," we need to look at data going further > back. Duménil and Lévy do so for the US, using consistent definitions > over time. If I remember correctly, they find no secular downward > trend in US profit rate data. > -- > Jim Devine / "An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of > support." -- John Buchan _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
