From: Philip Dunn (hyl0morph@YAHOO.CO.UK)
Date: Sat Sep 01 2007 - 04:36:27 EDT
On Wed, 2007-08-29 at 15:01 -0700, ajit sinha wrote: > Then thinking economists will have to become > non-thinking economists! Let's suppose I bought a > Picaso painting 10 years ago for 1 million dollars and > sell it today for 10 millions. Where did the surplus > labor come into Picaso's painting that I was keepin in > a locker in a bank? First tell me what, according to > you, would be Marx's answer since I presume we are > talking about Marx's concept of surplus labor. Then > you could tell me what would be your answer if you > disagree with Marx's answer. Cheers, ajit sinha > > Hi Ajit, Marx? Things can have a price but no value? A very dubious proposition IMHO. Me? Easy peasy. As one of the filthy idle rich who dabble in the art market you count as self-employed. The market has valued your productive labour (thirty minutes toil at the auctioneers to buy the Picasso and another thirty to sell it) at (the value of) 9 million dollars. If the value of money was a constant 0.1 hours per dollar, your socially necessary labour time was 900,000 hours. It is difficult with the self-employed to split wages from profits. Taking a 50-50 split you have been earning an hourly wage rate of 4.5 million dollars. Scott Fitzgerald once said "the rich are different from us". Hemingway should have replied "yes, they have better wages". ___________________________________________________________ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
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