--- andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> And maybe some of the disparate activities listed
> above are rent-taking. If so, which ones and why? Or
> are they all rent-taking? If so they are not that
> way
> because of temporary monopolies on resources or
> technologies. It is because the of nature of the
> activities, my friend was very clear that the core
> SV
> producing activity is making goods, physical
> devices,
> for sale on the market. Manufacturing.
>
[WS:] I think such views are not limited to MArxists. Some time ago we published a report calculating the value added to the economy by the nonprofit sector (which basically include wages paid, since there is no profit by definition.) The report was pooh-poohed by a manufacturing association (not exactly your Marxist types) arguing that nonprofits, being a part of the service economy, do not produce value, but merely distribute value produced by the mfg sector.
By defintion, income received by all factors of production (capital and labor) in the form of profits, wages, and property income are considered value added in SNA (which generally speaking is equal to the sales less intermediate consuption in the production accounts). I would imagine that a Marxist would object to idea that profits and property income add value - from a Marxist point of view only wages add value. So one way to reconcile MArxist and SNA point of view is to subtract profits and property income from the gross value added. Alternatively, one can argue that all value added in SNA is "surplus value" in the marxist sense - however parts of it are being expropriated in the form of profits and property income (rent).
A finer point is whether all wages are considered "value" from a marxist perspective (they are in the SNA). One can argue that wage has two compenents - rent in the sense of payments for ownership rights and compensation for the services rendered in the production of goods or services. I would imagine that the rent components is close to nil in manual labor but is quite substantial in positions where individuals have considerable monopoly rights (e.g. professional athletes, actors, or business executives) - but even the latter contriburte something to the creation of value. For example, executives provide organizational services that increase producitvity and that is clearly their contribution to value creation, albeit the value of those services are typically far smaller than the compensation they recieve (due to their monopoly position.)
However, estimating the "unproductive" component of wages would be very difficult, if at all possible. One way to approach it is to compare wages in different countries (which itself is problematic) with comparable industries, say US and Sweden or Japan, and treat diffrences (perhaps purchasing power parity adjusted) as indicators of the "rent" component in wages.
I think that this approach is at least conceptually more coherent than arbitrary distinctions based on the types of industry (mfg vs services or certain types of services).
Wojtek
____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs