From: Philip Dunn (hyl0morph@YAHOO.CO.UK)
Date: Tue Apr 03 2007 - 15:19:14 EDT
On Tue, 2007-04-03 at 14:06 -0400, glevy@PRATT.EDU wrote: > > Have you seen what I have written on this? > > Hi Michael: > > > Only what you've written on OPE-L about moral depreciation. When the > topic was discussed at length many years ago on the list I recall > that we were making similar points. > > > > Even here, you are the only one who seems to have understood. > > > I'd like to find out _why_ there has been resistance to this idea among > Marxians, which seems to me to be so basic to a comprehension of the > process and effects of technological change in means of production. I > have my suspicions, of course .... > > > In solidarity, Jerry Jerry, I agree with you and Michael. I dub this approach "strictly ex-post value accounting". Suppose a capitalist buys an asset and expects it to last 5 years. Let the depreciation shown in the accounts be 20% per annum linear, for the sake of the argument. Due to unanticipated technological progress, the capitalist is forced to replace the asset with a new and better one after 4 years. I think that the way that this should be accounted for is by prior year adjustments. Depreciation is 25% per annum and value added and profit must be retrospectively adjusted. In general, long lived assets should be depreciated in proportion to revenue. If sales revenue, in value terms, is: year 1 : 100 year 2 : 50 year 3 : 150 year 4 : 100 Then ex-post depreciation is: year 1 : 25% year 2 : 12.5% year 3 : 37.5% year 4 : 25% ___________________________________________________________ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com
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