You have to consider that the purchasing power of labor has declined since 1978... Also the number of non-competitive sectors in the u.s has increased since then, and the solution (stop gap measure) has been to use foreign labor and foreign products to fill in the gaps and resist inflation.. or even worse deflation due to the inability of the public to afford to spend as they service their own debt load.
Technology can unleash productive forces and act as a store of wealth for a business, but often what we've had are these productivity experiments- dot coms, etc where the experiment turns into a speculative adventure which is usurped by capital flight, etc... and often the productivity gains are never found because the game changes, rather it becomes about the image of looking technological in your business and it becomes a marketing ploy or stock market ploy to pump the Companies stock... even traditional Companies masquerade this way - look at GE as an example - its a technological, financial, environmental company...
Most businesspeople today don't want to create a business in a traditional artisan sense or by way of a bottom up approach. They want a clearly defined edge, flip, "trade" what have you. Businesses are all now on average effectively speculation machines, and this places a tax on people in the form of increased debt loads and threatens their own job security.
Without considering this aspect of financial capitalism, and why we got here, you end up with a labor based theory that doesn't have real traction, because the nature of labor and consumption in relation to debt has changed because of the maleficence of speculators who call themselves business owners. The political side of the coin is also another gross manifestation of this.
Technology can unleash productive forces and act as a store of wealth for a business, but often what we've had are these productivity experiments- dot coms, etc where the experiment turns into a speculative adventure which is usurped by capital flight, etc... and often the productivity gains are never found because the game changes, rather it becomes about the image of looking technological in your business and it becomes a marketing ploy or stock market ploy to pump the Companies stock... even traditional Companies masquerade this way - look at GE as an example - its a technological, financial, environmental company...
Most businesspeople today don't want to create a business in a traditional artisan sense or by way of a bottom up approach. They want a clearly defined edge, flip, "trade" what have you. Businesses are all now on average effectively speculation machines, and this places a tax on people in the form of increased debt loads and threatens their own job security.
Without considering this aspect of financial capitalism, and why we got here, you end up with a labor based theory that doesn't have real traction, because the nature of labor and consumption in relation to debt has changed because of the maleficence of speculators who call themselves business owners. The political side of the coin is also another gross manifestation of this.
