tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post4405807764586665436..comments2024-03-26T14:19:33.332-07:00Comments on Bench Grass: A Technical Appendix to January, 1949, II: Machine Tools, 1943 and 1949Erik Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-15561486827291263932019-04-23T08:06:47.905-07:002019-04-23T08:06:47.905-07:00In fact, I think Hawtrey is on about British polic...In fact, I think Hawtrey is on about British policy being too disinflationary. I think. He's a finance guy, and I barely speak their language as it is, and his opinion is decoupled from the material things that make me comfortable. I went looking for a blog post explicating his position rather better than Hawtrey does himself in his letters to <i>The Economist</i>, and found this extremely chewy pdf instead:<br />http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=EA34E9D87C9F74A68B110A043C64526C?doi=10.1.1.580.4772&rep=rep1&type=pdfErik Lundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-38914336741445340982019-04-23T02:17:09.574-07:002019-04-23T02:17:09.574-07:00Those Merlin charts are something! Even if the top...Those Merlin charts are something! Even if the top right one leaves off the y-axis label, which seems to be altitude? The point I would hammer on here is of course the sheer number of Merlin variants and the rate at which they appeared, and what that said about proto-lean production at R-R as opposed to mass. Incredibly, that graphic is quite synoptic and only shows a subset of the major versions.<br /><br />The other point I would hammer on is about the retooling thing. Is it their concern that too many of the available machines are going for export as opposed to recapitalizing British industry? We tend to frame the immediate postwar in terms of a tradeoff between "spending" (which is bad!) and "export" (which is good! all hail St Barnett!) - but in this case, the tradeoff between capital investment in the UK and exports is also important and maybe more so. In that sense, we've seen how the government recognized that in the Keynesian macro model, net trade and investment are two of the sources of demand. At given aggregate supply, if you want to increase one without generating an increased inflationary gap you've got to reduce the other, hence the capital programme cuts in order to make room for exports.<br /><br />But capital spending isn't all the Royal Festival Hall. The technical definition is spending on the means of future production. Perhaps, rather than complaining about BUNGLING! and Jerusalem on American tick, the criticism of Attlee era economic policy is more that the export drive swapped increased export volumes today for reduced ones in the future. In an accounting sense, today's export prices were being subsidised by disinvestment via depreciation on the tooling, that would some day need to be made good.Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17153530634675543954noreply@blogger.com