ABSTRACT
This chapter draws out the implications of so many anomalies and provisos for theories of financialization and comparative studies of advanced capitalism. It looks at the trends of investment, consumption, manufacturing, and service industries in the US from 1929 to 2019. The chapter explores the data in the National income and product accounts from 1929 to 2019 on the net savings of households, business enterprises, and the public sector. It suggests that a slight decline of labor income shares in the US economy during the 1980s is due to biased baselines and stretching the concept of income to include, and double-count, the changing values reported for financial claims. The chapter traces the historical data on unemployment, employment, and the use of industrial capacity in the US from 1948 to 2020. Research in critical political economy also claims that financialization contributes to a decline in investment and an increase in consumption.
