here's my take on the subject of wages.
Julien Pierrehumbert wrote:
>
> It seems that we need to do what I tried to evade in a little disclaimer in a
> previous post: examine and try to define "wages".
" First, I guess that no one here wants to think of the money aspect of
wage as more than an unstable
> form of something more important."
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why all these tortuous, theoretical and moralistic definitions of
"wage"? to anyone on the street, a wage is money or goods received per
unit of time by an employee from an employer for doing something of
"value" to the employer. remember that "values" are in the eye of the
beholder: you, me, the wage earner, the employer, etc. cutting down a
tree is wasteful to the environmentalist, but useful to the lumberjack.
trying to give wage some "natural", or "instrinsic" value gets into
speculative philosophy. do we want to become speculative philosophers?
there must be better things to do with our lives. keep definitions
simple.
----------------------------------------
> Now, I'll put what some have said on the subject:
>
> Perry: "income = livelihood = life"
>
----------------------------------------
close: income per unit time paid to someone by someone else. of course,
we use at least some of it to live, some to save, maybe some to invest,
some to be taken by the government, some to be stolen by others, some to
burn, some to give away, etc. lots of ways to use a wage.
------------------------------------------
> Mark: "wage is determined by the worker's consumption-basket"
>
------------------------------------------
the phrase "determined by" or "caused by" are the same. wages are NOT
caused by a "consumption-basket".
further, wages, profits, or any other kind of income can be used to
"consume a basket" of things; that's what we mean by "purchaing power"
(see below), so a consumption basket as a way to use any kind of income
does not apply to a wage only and it certainly doesn't cause a wage.
------------------------------------------
> Tom: "No no! not "determined by. The determination of wage rates is [...]
> partially determined by cultural values.
> wage is also *affected by* what you term the "consumption-basket", however."
>
---------------------------------------------
true, the wage, as i define it above as income per unit time paid to
someone by someone else is determined (caused) by lots of humans
behaving in lots of human institutions in a specific region of space
called a "culture" and people in a culture have "values" and maybe we
can average out these values into a set of "cultural values", but it
wouldn't be easy. therefore, i submit that this "definition" lacks
usefulness.
----------------------------------------------
> Hallyx: "'wage' is merely a symbolic representation of energy flow. Energy, of
> course flows in only one direction: to a less useful state (2nd Law). The higher
> the wage the faster the entropic flow."
>
-----------------------------------------------
wage a "symbol" for energy flow? many kinds of energy flow through a
culture at all times to cause many different things to happen besides
creating a wage for a person. energy as defined in Physics is a lot
different from a wage. therefore, equating wage with energy flow is
useless. FYI, a "wage" AND energy (and time, mass, etc.) are scalar
values (measured by quantity), not vector values (measured by quantity +
direction). therefore, saying that "energy flows in a direction" is
creating a definition inconsistent with the customary definitions of
Physics. a mass containing energy (internal, kinetic, potential) can
have a velocity and/or acceleration where velocity and acceleration ARE
vectors.
i never heard of the expression, "entropic flow" before and i don't know
what it means.
(FYI, alternate forms of the second law of thermodynamics are given
below. all are equivalent.
1. It is impossible for any system to undergo a process in which it
absorbs heat from a reservoir at a single temperature and converts it
completely into mechanical work, while ending in the same state in which
it began.
2. It is impossible for any heat engine to have a thermal efficiency of
100%.
3. It is impossible for any process to have as its sole result the
transfer of heat from a cooler to a hotter body.
4. When all systems taking part in a process are included, the entropy
either remains constant or increases.
5. When all systems taking part in a process are included, the entropy
cannot decrease.
-----------------------------------------------------
> I'll state again my and Mark's objection to what Hallyx said: While it can be
> said that every bit of wages are manifestations of energy flows, if you say that
> the flow (KW/h?) is proportional to the "size" of wages, then you depart from the
> common sense definiton of wages as stated by Perry. If two wages can buy
> the same things in two places where the energy flow embodied is different in
> amount (let's say because of more efficient production), the wage will have the
> same value IMO. Can we agree on this?
> Now, as to the realtion between wage and the consumption basket, the two
> things are obviously in relation. But wage as I think of it includes what is
> redistributes to other persons than the workers, like his family (not only nuclear
> familiy) or people who don't work (elderly, disabled, workless, etc.) through
> taxes, insurances, or whatever. Plus, even if you define household
> applicances, cars, and houses as consumption, there is usually still a part of
> the wage (commonsense defintion) which goes into investment through taxes
> which are used in public investment or through personnal savings f.ex. I think
> this is a reality of modern economies and that we have to take this into account
> even if it wasn't important in the XIXth century.
> So the definition of wages I would submit to you is: the purchasing power that is
> embodied in the money-wage at the time it is payed and before all taxes and
> other deductions. I would personally accept similar defintions (excluding
> taxes, f.ex.).
---------------------------------------------------
yes, i agree. a wage definitely has purchasing power. every economist
will agree to that. doesn't have to be a money-wage, however. a few
cartons of cigarettes paid to me as a wage can be used to purchase
something too, so they have purchasing power. however, any income has
purchasing power - not just wage income, so there's nothing unique about
wages having purchasing power. money, however defined or created, has
purchasing power.
------------------------------------------------------
With that definition, wages are indeed the result of waste, but not in
> a proportional way. With that definition, wage is defined by society as a whole
> (which means that it is determined by cultural as well as economic and
> ecological factors). With that definition, the relation between wages and the
> "consumption basket" is loose while of course important and thus Mark will
> maybe not like it.
-------------------------------------------------
wage the result of waste? whose waste? what is waste to one person is
wealth to someone else. maybe what a worker does to earn a wage by
creating something is "wasteful" to some people, but certainly not to
his/her employer who would not hire a worker to produce waste by the
employer's definition. again, waste is in the eye of the beholder. OK,
we can say that any event produces more entropy which is "waste" energy,
but then maybe i shouldn't be typing this post because by moving my
fingers i increase the world's entropy. too bad, world; get used to
it!
-------------------------------------------------
> Anyway, I welcome your attacks on this and hope we can develop a common
> vocabulary.
>
-------------------------------------------------
if we are to develop a common defintion of wage, then i suggest we not
use the methods of speculative philosophy; otherwise, we will be at it
for the rest of our lives. keep it simple and move on!
norm
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