Japan was outcompeting US car production in terms of labor time even though it had not technological advantage.
On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 6:13 PM, nathan tankus <[email protected]> wrote: > Michael Perelman said... > > "Regarding Nathan's synthesis, one reason why Sherman may have been > right as well as Shaikh et al. Consider the automobile industry in > the 50's and 60s. Very little competition occurred. Studebaker, > Hudson, & American Motors survived at the margin with the support of > the Big Three to reduce the threat of antitrust. > > With international competition, which heated up later, the > monopolistic profits evaporated. > > Intellectual property rights tightened to protect some key industries > from such foreign competition as the US economy heated up." > > I find your line of analysis interesting and I want to follow up on it > by taking what I see as the "classical marxist" perspective. > > I actually don't think one need to go to lack of competition for an > explanation. If you think of it in terms of average socially necessary > labor time on a world scale, > The socially necessary labor time it took to build a car in the united > states was very below average in the "world market" because the > technological innovations hadn't yet been defused across the world. As > a result the American car companies were actually out competing > others. In the late 1960's and on the technological innovations became > more generalized and what Schumpeter would call "innovation rents" > disappeared. > > As an aside I think marx had a lot of interesting and suggestive > thoughts on trade theory and balance of payments but I think they've > been underdeveloped severly in a lot of the Marxian writings I've > encountered. > > -- > -Nathan Tankus > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
