From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Mon Nov 10 2003 - 05:34:55 EST
Phil: Suppose nominal value added totals 2 million dollars. Then the _absolute_ value of money is 0.5 hours per dollar. To get from a nominal price to a price measured in hours just multiply by the absolute value of money. For simplicity I will assume that the real and the absolute values of money are constant in time. Marx's 'value of labour-power' is gone. Instead there is labour-power value. The actual, recognised labour-power value of a clock hour of labour-power is equal to the real wage paid for it. The value creating power of labour-power is identically this real labour-power value. Also there is a potential-for-recognition for this actual labour-power value. This is the natural real wage. ------------------------------------ Paul: I don't quite follow this. You seem to have gone from a distinction between labour and labour power to a distinction between absolute and real values of money. How is this an advantage? ---------------------------------- To measure it we need to do a least squares fit to price data: minimize with respect to x the square of (y - Mx) where x is a vector of hourly natural real wage rates, y is a vector of recognized labor activity, measured by money, expressed in hours. In other words y is equal to a vector of firms' absolute value added (nominal value added in dollars times the absolute value of money). M is a matrix. The element M(f,t) gives the hours worked in firm f by workers of skill type t. We need to have the number of firms much greater than the number of skill types to get a good fit. The dimensions of y and M are hours. x is dimensionless -- wages measured in money hours divided by clock hours. ------------------------------------------------- Whatdo you expect these xs to be, >1 or <1?
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