Does anyone have any comments on the idea that superior Japanese and German, economic performance in so called high value added production vis a vis the UK and US is due to more advanced "skills formation systems", as David Ashton and Francis Green put it in *Education, Training and the Global Economy*. My intuitive response to the skills craze is skepticism towards emphasis on the supply side of skills. As already suggested, due to the exigencies of greater non-price competition and the greater possibility of extra surplus value in the producer goods industry there may be a greater need and demand for skilled labor to contrive superior machines to meet the needs of sophisticated buyers. But the more important question centers on the determinants of the demand for new producer goods both domestically and abroad, i.e., the real rate of accumulation in fixed capital (not that proxy of "investment" as it shows up in national accounts). Because capital accumulation is indeed the enlarged reproduction of the means of production, upswings and decline are first and foremost noticeable in the manufacture of production goods, as Paul Mattick noted. At any rate, I think Michael's excerpt is quite important in getting beyond the craze of the skills shortage or the lack of a good skills formation system as the root cause of Anglo-Saxon capitalism's productive weakness, such as it is, vis a vis rivals. Best, Rakesh
