Re: The oil and gas situation, according to the expurts

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

> Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
> >
> > Has anyone ever done a really comprehensive
> > quantitative world study of the
> > political economy of cars ?
> 
> "Automobilization," if I remember correctly, was a central concern of
> Baran & Sweezy's _Monopoly Capitalism_. They offer that as the core
> explanation for both the boom of the '20s and of the '50s.
> 
> Carrol
> 
> (This is strictly from memory of a book I last looked at over 25 years
> ago.)

Carrol, your memory is correct. B&S posited a persistent tendency for the US economy to
fall into Depression-like stagnation, ever since the rise of "Monopoly Capital" in the 1900s. 
One reason why there were short-lived periods of (limited) prosperity, in their books, was 
unexplained waves of innovation with accompanying infrastructural investment, centered on 
automobilization. (BTW, I don't find this very satisfying.) 

Jim D.