Re: [Marxism] America No. 1?

["rrubinelli" <rrubinelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

While I appreciate Julio's attempt to bridge the gap and synthesize the
disagreements between Joaquin and myself, I disagree that there is a
relative decline of US economic power vis-a-vis the rest of capitalism.
Let me produce an interesting excerpt from The Financial Times (Jan 13)
that might help explain what has really taken place:

Reports The Financial Times (January 13, 2005):
To appreciate the transformation in relative performance, one needs to
look at the entire period since the second world war. In 1950, the
weighted average GDP per head of the four big non-English speaking
industrial countries [Japan, Germany, France, Italy] was just 35 percent
of US levels. By 1991, this had risen to 79 percent. By 2004, the ratio
was back to 70 percent, where it had been in 1973....

...Japan's GDP per head rose from just 20 percent of US levels in 1950
to peak at 85 percent in 1991, only to decline to 74 percent in 2004.
The patterns for...Germany, France, Italy are similar, although less
dramatic...

Since the golden era of 1950-1973, the growth performance of the four
non-English-speaking countries [Japan, Italy, Germany, France] has
deteriorated over each successive cycle-- the era of the two oil shocks
(1973-1981), then the expansion of the 1980s (1981-91) and finally the
most recent expansion (1991-2004)...

...Still more revealing is what has happened in return on investment. A
simple way of understanding this is via the
incremental-capital-output-ratio (ICOR)-- the quantity of investment
divided by the increase in output it generates. In the four
English-speaking countries [US, UK, Canada, Australia], a given amount
of gross investment has, over the last decade, generated at least twice
as much ouput as in the other four countries...


What I disagree with is FT's designation of two oil shocks, when there
have actually been four (price break in 85-86 leading to the hammering
of Mexico, Venezuela, and almost Citibank in the process, oiling the way
for the Washington Consensus and the Plaza Accords,  and the recent
continuing 1999-20__?  OPEC shock).  But I think the article gets it
right about the continued dominance of US capital during the past 30
years.

rr


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