On Jan 30, 2015, at 9:54 AM, Doug Henwood wrote: > The economy is structurally troubled? That's the whole point of > getting the state involved in investment and just who owns the state? It ain't you or me. > especially since big corporations have on their balance sheets that > they're not investing. And where did all that cash come from? Every penny--and more--was given them by THEIR state via THEIR central bank. > It's not like profits are hard to come by, FROPers to the contrary. Profits ain't hard to come by? Keynes, whose name is so easily taken in vain, talked about a little matter called the "Marginal Efficiency of Investment." The idea is that profit-seekers (aka capitalists) determine their investment policies by comparing the expected amount of profit from an additional unit of investment to the interest-cost of borrowing. They then invest up to the point where the expected rate of profit on the money invested no longer exceeds the rate of interest on the money borrowed. So why ain't they investing those "vast amounts of cash" at the zero (and negative) interest rates imposed through financial repression by their central-banker pals? Seems like they think that the FROP (under whatever name you want to call it) is squeezing them so badly that, at what everyone agrees is a grossly insufficient level of investment, the expected return on more investment is at best zero, and probably quite negative. Marx spoke of a Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit (FTROP) but what we have now is better called a FROP (Fallen Rate of Profit). > A Green New Deal may be uninspiring... Oh, it's plenty inspiring enough for an election slogan--given gross public ignorance about the actual Lily White New Deal. But it carries with it just a few grains of poison--in its suggestion that FDR was, and his present-day successors are, anything but diehard and violent defenders of the capitalist social order who will do anything but destroy any populist movement they can work their ways into.
Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
