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I understand the reduction problem in very straighforward terms.
Skilled labor's wages have to be higher to allow it to recoup lost income
during training at some discount. Capital pays the extra wages for skilled
labor due to extra value it can produce but as training becomes
rationalised or skills built into the machines itself, the wages of skilled
labor should be dynamically reduced to the wages of simple average labor,
allowing for no more than said recouping at the new rationalised level of
training time at some discount.
The higher wages of skilled labor do not represent a return on human
capital investment (Becker); nor does the skilled labor embody in any way
constant capital as some of kind of organanon the value of which is somehow
transmitted to the final good (Which is what Hilferding seems to be
implying).
Capital will come to prefer labor which has undergone some training due to
the extra value it can produce by handling and designing complex machinery
and wages should come to reflect the income from lost labor time. Capital
has tended to increase the educational levels of the workforce, and the
NICs which have done the best are those in which at least secondary
education has become widely available.
In the last twenty years relative wage inequalities have exploded,
fracturing the working class within the OECD (though Germany apparently
less so). There has not been a dynamic reduction of the wages of skilled
labor, and I suggest that we look at the interference the nation state
systems puts on the operation of the law of value. This Marx never did.
Yours, Rakesh
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