Re: costs of unproductive labor

Ian Hunt (Ian.Hunt@flinders.edu.au)
Thu, 22 Jan 1998 13:27:25 +1030 (CDT)

Paul Cockshott writes:
"This is incoherent at the most basic accounting level. The figure in the
NIA
for unproductive labour will be in million dollars per annum, as such
this can not be a stock."

I agree that national accounts which cite unproductive wage costs as so
many million dollars per annum cannot coherently be represented as an
addition to capital stock. In fact if a part of the capital stock is a fund
for paying unproductive wages then there must be a corresponding flow of
wages, in"million dollars per annum." My suggestion was only that
analytically you could best take account of unproductive labour by
increasing the variable capital stock in the proportion of unproductive
wage flows to productive wage flows. (That's if you want to say that those
workers play no real part in the production of commodities)

Dr Ian Hunt,
Director, Centre for Applied Philosophy,
Philosophy Dept,
Flinders University of SA,
Humanities Building,
Bedford Park, SA, 5042,
Ph: (08) 8201 2054 Fax: (08) 8201 2556