the problem is that it's possible for what superficially looks like vigorous growth to hide deep instability. I interpret the US boom of the late 1920s in these terms, just like Bob Pollin's interpretation of the "Clinton boom" in his recent book...
Agreed but...isn't the transformation from a post-war type society (and class structure) back to sort of a 1920s type a lengthy process that still may have a ways to go? Even more so when one takes the international dimension into account. The world has never really seen this particular sort of transformation backwards. That transformation process gives a lengthy "one shot" to profit rates and keep the "boom" running for a while (of course with LOTS of short term fluctuations and fragilities that cause short term crises that could be mismanaged and become big). Plus couldn't there be some technological reasons giving profit rates a "long wave" type upward buoyancy?
Couldn't a "boom" last long enough to make it seem like we are being Cassandras? If predictions don't become true within a reasonable time frame they can be politically discrediting - unless one is very clear. BTW, I put "boom" in quotation marks because I think it is really more of a transformation: a large part of the population (not the part that the media reflects) will see little or no benefit and, above all, will see themselves structurally excluded from wealth and power in large and new ways.
BTW, Jim surely knows this, but Dumenil & Levy's new book (which I haven't yet digested) seems to make a good starting point on some of this (a bit more along Jim's lines than mine).
Paul
