Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>In the July-August 1999 MR, a special issue on the "state of the world",
>there are articles by James Petras on Latin America and Stanislav Menshikov
>on Russia that include interesting statistics on the wage share of national
>income and GDP respectively (might be the same thing?). In Latin America,
>the percentages are striking:
>
>WAGES AS A PERCENTAGE SHARE OF NATIONAL INCOME
>
> 1970 1980 1985 1989 1992
>Argentina 40.9 31.5 31.9 24.9 --
>Chile 47.7 43.4 37.8 19.0 --
>Ecuador 34.4 34.8 23.6 16.0 15.8
>Mexico 37.5 39.0 31.6 28.4 27.3
>Peru 40.0 32.8 30.5 25.5 16.8
[...]
>I find this breakdown very useful since it helps to provide another
>dimension to the whole question of "rising GDP" at the basis of World Bank
>and HDI statistics. Unfortunately, both sets of statistics seem to derive
>from local sources. Does anybody know of a single source for these kinds of
>statistics on a country-by-country basis? Basically, I am looking for wage
>earners share of GDP or National Income, whichever is more useful (if they
>are not in fact the same thing.)
The figures, as far as Mexico is concerned, are highly disputed. The claim
is that they are too low to be true. (They are based on INEGI's raw data.)
If you're a bit open to what conventional economists do, you may want to
take a look at the 'adjustments' to the raw data introduced by those who
have been doing the Solowian 'growth accounting' exercise on Latin America.
For instance, Victor Elias wrote a book in the early 1990's ('Sources of
Growth: A Study of Seven Latin American Economies') where he adjusted the
figures up. I don't remember his reasoning to justify it. But to learn, in
general, about the concerns of conventional economists regarding labor-share
data, look up 'Douglas Collin' (from Williams College) on the net. He wrote
a recent paper titled, 'Getting Income Shares Right'. It must be online or
you may request it.
I wish I could type here what the official Marxist view on this issue should
be, but I'll leave that up to you.
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