I think that you overestimate how difficult it is to do
empirical work.
It does not require funding, only access to a library with
back issues of national income statistics and a calculator.
A small computer is also helpful, but, since you are on the
web you must have that.
In thinking about the falling rate of profit the first thing
you should do is look at the time trends of the organic
composition, s/v etc in your country over the last 50 years or so
and then see if you can explain it.
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> From: aramos@aramos.bo
> Let us suppose that I want to understand the present levels
> of unemployment in several countries. What are Marx's insights about
> this? Well, for example, the Law of Accumulation and the LFTRP. But
> we have "modern interpreters" as Tugan (and his follower Okishio) who
> say that the LFTRP is false because an increasing material
> productivity would imply an increasing rate of profit. They even
> "demonstrate" this using a math supposedely more developed than that
> of Marx. So, to know if Marx's insight is valuable in understanding
> "actual capitalism", I need firstly to contrast what modern
> interpreters have been saying about this. This implies to study
> Marx's work that is mainly a draft. >
> In my personal case, the work of understanding actual capitalism is
> not so easy because in these countries it is very difficult to
> have means of research. "Economics" is a kind of religion
> (neoliberalism) that you have to "share" in order to find jobs. This
> means that it is *absolutely impossible* to find funding to develop
> independent empirical ("concrete") research.