Re: Re: RE: US foreign investment

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Not to mention that picking two countries out of a hundred or so says
> absolutely nothing about the data or any analytical technique
> associated with it.
>
> Though the fact that U.S. assets in Norway are 130 times those in
> Nicaragua, and there are 23 times as many MNC affiliates there, comes
> closer to proving my point than the contrary.
>

I don't see what points (yours or anyone else's) are or are not being
"proved." I suspect the answers (and the questions to be answered)
aren't, to begin with, in these or any other statistics. First there has
to be a framework of some sort to define the meaning of any figures.
Facts never carry their own meaning. Many decades ago Jalee succeeded in
wresting some meaning from a large complex of figures but no one here,
it seems to me, has really even tried to define what the goal of the
search is.

Perhaps Hegel is relevant here. We have to posit a whole first, then
explore what figures are relevant to what.

Carrol