> Sure they have. There are some problems with using the wage & salary
> figures from the NIPAs. One is that the aggregate measure includes
> fringe benefits, which accrue mainly to the top half of the income
> distribution. And another is that they include managerial pay, most of
> which is conceptually a return to capital rather than a pure wage.
How is managerial pay a return to capital? It's that neither in a NIPA/orthodox sense, nor in Marx's sense: "The salary of the manager is, or should be, simply the wage of a specific type of skilled labour, whose price is regulated in the labour-market like that of any other labour" (Capital Vol. 3, Ch. 27). Of course you're right that if you count only production workers' earnings as wages, then their share of GDP has fallen a lot. No argument there. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander: If Brenner had been forced to add managerial pay to his measure of profits, his profit numbers would be hugely inflated, at an accelerating rate.
SA