Tag Archives: US profit rate

Every year, I look at measuring the US rate of profit a la Marx. Official data are now available in order to update the measurement for 2018 (not 2019 yet!). As usual, if you wish to replicate my results, I again refer you to the excellent manual for doing so, kindly compiled by Anders Axelsson from Sweden.There are many ways to measure the rate of profit a la Marx (for the various ways, see http://pinguet.free.fr/basu2012.pdf). As previously, I start with an update of the measure used by...

The latest data for net fixed assets in the US have been released, enabling me to update the calculations for the US rate of profit a la Marx up to 2016. Last year, I did the calculations with the help of Anders Axelsson from Sweden, who not only replicated the results to ensure their accuracy (and found mistakes!), but also produced a manual for carrying out the calculations that anybody could use. As I did last year and in previous years, I have also updated the rate of profit using the...

And so immediately we must ask: why do so many Marxists seem to ignore this fact and assault us with data on profit rates from c. 1945 to today, when their starting point was a period with abnormally and unusually high profit rates and this skews their data?Robert Brenner’s data for the US non-financial profit rate from 1929 to 2007 is in the graph below, as taken from this post here. I am unsure where the data actually comes from, but perhaps Brenner (2002) or (2006). Notice the spike in...