> In
>> Britain in 1999 24 million people worked a sum total of 47 736 million
>> hours. In that time they created first goods and services to an
>> equivalent of their wages, £491.3 billion, and then an additional value
>> of £787.4 billion for their employers.
Then asking
>Interesting numbers, Jim. But where did you get them and what do they
>mean? Do the 24 million include all who draw a paycheck, including
>executives/manager capitalists, or was some attempt made to confine the
>numbers to working class, or even, perhaps productive labour? Does the
>491.3 billion pounds include what the US Nat. Income Accounts calls
>employee compensation (fringes as well as wages and salaries)?
I would never claim that the official statistics are wholly accurate, only that they can be used to indicate the relationship, which was what concerned me (and the article). Its quantitative aspect, as long as it is not insignificant, does not disturb the general point.
> And what
>about that additional value? Includes money to replace capital stock
>(depreciation), doesn't it, not just surplus available to
>capitalists--in other words, money capitalists must advance to reproduce
>dead labor as well as that advanced to living labor?
Yes, 'added value' in the statistics is very loosely equivalent to Marx's surplus value. Capitalists spend it on themselves and on new capital. But that new capital remains their property.
>
>Have you ever looked at time series of these data?
>
Unfortunately, the British Office of National Statistics only included Gross Value Added since 1998.
-- James Heartfield