[PEN-L:1748] Re: Minimum wages in real terms

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

At 7:35 PM 12/5/95, Paul Zarembka wrote:

>Without looking up numbers of my own
>and using Doug's 39.3% as the wage share, I realize that Doug is not
>introducing unproductive labor into his calculations.  Unproductive labor
>is paid out of surplus value and therefore over-estimates remuneration to
>value- and surplus value- producing labor.  This over-estimation can be
>quite substantial (in the order of doubling for the U.S. economy if the
>numbers I remember from Shaikh and from Wolff are correct).  Suppose the
>rate of surplus value then is not 60.7/39.3 or something like that, but
>80.3/19.7.  Then real minimum wages and real average wages could double
>and still imply a rate of exploitation on the order of 150%.

No, I sure wasn't introducing any distinctions between productive and
unproductive workers. I was treating "workers" in the sociological sense -
of people who have to work to live and who take orders rather than give
them. Since well under 20% of the labor force consists of production
workers in manufacturing, we're talking lots & lots of unproductive labor.

Doug

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