In reply to OPE-L 5006.
Fred, I'm absolutely overjoyed that, after all these many years,
you've produced the long-awaited numerical example. Finally we
have some NUMBERS that allow us to disprove the claims you make
about your interpretation.
You have long asserted that your prices of production and general
profit rate differ from the physicalist (Sraffian, etc.) prices of
production and general profit rate when the physical quantities --
technical and real wage coefficients -- are the same. You now
claim you have proved this. You are wrong.
You've produced different prices and a different rate of profit
from Steedman's, but only because your set of physical quantities
differs! If your set of physical quantities were the same, your
results would be the same as Steedman's.
In Steedman's example, the real wage of workers equals
5/80 = 0.0625 units of corn per unit of labor.
(See his equation at the top of p. 46 of _Marx After Sraffa_: 80w
= 5Pc, where w is the money wage and Pc is the unit price of corn.
>From this we can derive the real wage rate, w/Pc = 5/80.)
However, in your first example (column 2 of the table in your
post), Fred, the real wage rate equals
0.0893 units of corn per unit of labor.
In your second example (column 3), the real wage rate isn't even
equalized across sectors any more. (Nor is the money wage rate
equalized any more). Now the real wage rate equals
0.1190 units of corn per unit of labor in the iron sector;
0.1810 units of corn per unit of labor in the gold sector; and
0.2048 units of corn per unit of labor in the corn sector.
Thus, in neither example is your set of physical quantities the
same as Steedman's. Your attempted proofs fail. The results
suggest the very opposite of what you hoped to show.
Ciao,
Drewk
Andrew ("Drewk") Kliman
Dept. of Social Sciences
Pace University
Pleasantville, NY 10570 USA
phone: (914) 773-3968
fax: (914) 773-3951
Home: 60 W. 76th St. #4E
New York, NY 10023 USA
"The practice of philosophy is itself theoretical. It is the
critique that measures the individual existence by the essence,
the particular reality by the Idea."
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