Jim: You wouldn't call the period since 1952 [44 years] the "long run"? Given what Dumenil & Levy [no relation, I think, JL] write below, isn't Alejandro's quote accurate? Jerry On Tue, 29 Oct 1996 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Alejandro Valle Baeza writes that: >>I think that Dumenil et al > showed that rate of profit is falling in the long run in the US > economy.<< > The last book that Alejandro cites Dumenil & Levy, The Economics > of Profit Rate, does not show a downward trend from 1869 to the > present. Rather, the data show a pattern of the following sort: > "Considering the trend of the accounting profit rate, th > periodization can be stated as follows. A first period is evident > from the beginning of the series [1869] up to the 1900s [during > which the profit rate falls]. At this point, the tendency is > reverse, and the profit rate is progressively augmented from then > 1910s to the 1940s. Then a new decline is initiated. This trend > begins in 1869 at 39.3 percent, falls to a minimum value of 22.5 > percent in 1912; it reaches its maximum in 1951 at 35.5 percent, > and then falls back to 25.4 percent in 1989." (p. 256)
