Point of No Return - Industrial Production

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

As you can see, the Industrial Output of Japan never recovered the 2008 crash, and is now at 86 compared to 110 in 2008.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=8950&d=1352604038

UK Industrial Production was at 105 in 2000 and the current "recovery" still does not see production reach 100.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=8948&d=1352604019

The US has the same problem.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&id=INDPRO&scale=Left&range=Max&cosd=1919-01-01&coed=2012-07-01&line_color=%230000ff&link_values=false&line_style=Solid&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&lw=1&ost=-99999&oet=99999&mma=0&fml=a&fq=Monthly&fam=avg&fgst=lin&transformation=lin&vintage_date=2012-09-09&revision_date=2012-09-09

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Interesting but "recovery" can take quite a long time and we do not know what will happen in the future; so I do not quite see what you are getting at. Your photos show a lack of recovery, yes, but what is your main point?

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Interesting but "recovery" can take quite a long time and we do not know what will happen in the future; so I do not quite see what you are getting at. Your photos show a lack of recovery, yes, but what is your main point?


The point of the thread is just more statistics that support the validity of the theory of the Falling Rate of Profit (http://www.revleft.com/vb/falling-rate-profiti-t175368/index.html?t=175368). Every advanced capitalist country currently has a lower industrial output than five or more years ago. The theory that the western Capitalist industrial sectors have reached a "Point of No Return" is supported by this evidence and is in timely accord with Harvard's predictions that global Industrial Production will start declining in 2013:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=8836&d=1344491774

[l'Enfermé]

Comrade, do you have any more info on that 1972 study?

[blake 3:17]

There's a whole series of debates about the falling rate of profit which I am no expert on at all.

Isn't Japan gonna be pretty screwed for a long time due to the Fukushima disaster?

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Comrade, do you have any more info on that 1972 study?

I do not know what you are referring to. If you mean the Harvard Predictions, I believe this was from 2002.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Comrade, do you have any more info on that 1972 study?

Actually, I found the study Comrade!


A better picture:

http://ttbtsdisclose.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/limitsofgrowth1.jpg

49 pages "The Limits to Growth" (http://bit-player.org/deck.js/limits-to-growth-Harvard-2012-03-30/ltg-talk.html#worry)

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Author of the Study:

eNc38ZGQ0I4


The factor of environmental boundaries to economic growth are of course also very real. Scientists agree that the late 1970's and 1980's economic situation was environmentally sustainable.

In the USA workers' productivity has increased 90% since 1979 while workers real wages have been stagnating since then. The richest 5% of Americans consume 37% of consumer products while the bottom (working people) 80% in the USA consume a mere 34%. The richest 20% of humanity consume 80% of the world's resources. This problem for humanity today is the Bourgeoisie and their wasteful system in all countries of the world. I.e, the solution to the environmental problem is Class War!

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

UPDATE: Life expectancy among White Americans falls by 5 years (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_09/shocker_stat_of_the_day_life_e040058.php)


Yesterday, the New York Times reported on an alarming new study: researchers have documented that the least educated white Americans are experiencing sharp declines in life expectancy. Between 1990 and 2008, white women without a high school diploma lost a full five years of their lives, while their male counterparts lost three years. Experts say that declines in life expectancy in developed countries are exceedingly rare, and that in the U.S., decreases on this scale “have not been seen in the U.S. since the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918.” Even during the Great Depression, which wrought economic devastation and severe psychic trauma for millions of Americans, average life expectancy was on the increase. . .

For decades, the United States has been making a series of political choices that has distributed wealth and power upwards and left working Americans not only poorer and sicker, but also feeling far more burdened and distressed, and experiencing far less security and control over their lives. The consequences of these choices have been devastating, and absent a dramatic reversal in our political course, they are likely to get even worse. Where inequality is concerned, Republicans have their foot on the accelerator, while the best the Democrats seem to be able to do is to (temporarily) put their foot on the brake.

We are on a trajectory all right, and it’s not a good one.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

So, this graph...
http://ttbtsdisclose.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/limitsofgrowth1.jpg
is a reality already.

[Avanti]

the economy will never recover again.

the industrial age is over. welcome to the cyberpunk age, little friend.

people will not consume more. the middle class has reached its consumer potential. there is no need for a working class either, due to automatization and outsorcing. the future is a sea of turmoil with small gated community islands overseen by private police armies paid by smaller and more desperate bourgeois states.

the future is determined in mega-cities. the era of civil society is over. mega-cities are unmanageable urban sprawls, where most people are going to struggle for survival like savages in the jungle.

we will all become brazil.

welcome to the future.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Are these countries primarily 'industrial' countries, though?

I mean, Britain suffered a huge relative decline around the turn of the 20th century and has never 'recovered' from that, but that doesn't mean the end of capitalism. It means the end of industrial capitalism in that country, but capitalism is quite ingenious at finding new ways to draw profit - imperialism, for example. Another would be financial capitalism, which Britain certainly is in the throes of.

[Qumielhan]

Look at the Harvard's graphic. The level of industrial production is a bit lower than predicted, and slowly continues to decrease, while amount of service is slowly growing.
Which is understandable - only high-tech and military production is made in the "cap.core nations" so as to keep monopoly on high technology and by that monopoly to keep oneself superior to others.
The whole "miraculous" industrial growth of the "asian tigers" went because Japan moved to higher technology production (from radios to tape recorders to televisors etc), which yealded higher prophits, while constantly moving low-tech production to countries with cheaper workforce to maintain constantly high level of profits (-> to South Korea, Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Singapoure...).
Hell, I won't be surprised if in thirty years we'll be using blu-rays made in Guatemala or Moldavia.

So in time a demand for industrial workforce is lowering in the core countries, so does its industrial output. It may even never reach the level of 2008 or reach it in a decade or so, while actual profits would still rise due to rise of services sector.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Are these countries primarily 'industrial' countries, though?

I mean, Britain suffered a huge relative decline around the turn of the 20th century and has never 'recovered' from that, but that doesn't mean the end of capitalism. It means the end of industrial capitalism in that country, but capitalism is quite ingenious at finding new ways to draw profit - imperialism, for example. Another would be financial capitalism, which Britain certainly is in the throes of.

Hey man, you know what happens when your country stops making shit and has to import shit? It runs a trade deficit, a tool once implemented by imperialist countries that China is using against USA and most advanced capitalist countries now.

What happens when you run a trade deficit? You have to take on debt to pay it. What happens when debt runs up and rates of profit fall? You have a systemic crisis of Accumulation. What happens when production is automated in every single capitalist enterprise everywhere? The rates of profit of production say 0%; Capital will just sit on its little account, lonely, not knowing what it should do at this historical stage as it is not capable to expand its value anymore in the production sector.
At this point of the progress of the productive forces under Capitalism, Humankind necessarily dies off as the graph shows (or it can make the decision to leave the capitalist mode of production, create something new and survive).

You stop producing shit, and you soon have a crisis on your hand. You stop producing anything, and human civilization collapses (like we are seeing in Greece where industrial production has collapsed by a mere 25% since 2008, imagine what minus 50%, 60% 100% looks like) and eventually humankind dies off if it does not change from the dying mode of production.

You stop making shit and you have no more economy. Economics is not that hard to grasp: you see negative growth/you stop making shit = you have a failing economy. There's no functioning Accumulation/Bourgeois Human Society when the numbers start reading - "Minus" -, I don't get why you do not understand this.