>not to mention that, when you pay a hospital the bill, you're paying for all the labor that enabled the surgeon to do the hour's worth of work.
Yes, all the other labour performed in the hospital is essential to the surgeon's work, but the point I was making is that the physician's actual personal hour of labour is the expression of the many hours of labour that has gone into imparting the physician with the skills necessary. Of course the same holds true for many other hospital workers and even the assembly-line worker, but the to varying degrees. This explains the difference in value between the labour of a highly trained worker and a relatively unskilled worker.
As you point out, even the most unskilled worker on the production line expresses that labour value of all the hours that go into rearing a person to adulthood too. Its the same principle. except that everyone has to be reared through childhood, so the differences in value are more subtle.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas