On Feb 23, 2009, at 2:18 PM, SA wrote:
> How is managerial pay a return to capital?
What else is it? Especially now that most compensation comes from stock-related pay, rather than a straight salary, as it did way back when.
> 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).
But it's not regulated by that kind of market at all. Study after study has shown no relation between pay and performance. Pay is set by board compensation committees, which are staffed by CEOs of other companies. It's a giant exercise in back scratching.
> 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.
Most Marxists - regardless of theoretical perspective, like Shaikh, Brenner, Bond - want to argue there was no improvement in profitability in the 1980s and 1990s. Obviously I don't agree. To deny that is to miss a profound shift since 1980.
Doug