On 6/13/06, Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Which is likely to happen? Will the unproductive labor of advertising increase the productivity of productive labor?
Since you insist on luring us into this theoretical cul-de-sac, Michael, I'll take a stab at it. I can't answer for the BLS as I don't know where -- or how -- they draw the line on product improvement vs. price increase. But going back to Dilke again, I would note that there is a sumptuary component to his "definition" of unproductive labour (using the term definition broadly). He starts from the "plain levelling principle" of the average wage of a common labourer, reasoning that while skill and quality differentials certainly do exist they are not likely to be as large as the income differences between different classes. So everything above this average can be treated as "interest on capital". Thus an "unproductive" worker is not merely non-productive but is negatively productive in that he or she destroys a greater quantity of value than he or she, on average, could be assumed to produce even if employed in a "productive" occupation. Get that? I admit it's a sort of convoluted and mixed analysis. But it's not *primarily* in the non-productive activity that the unproductive worker is unproductive. If advertising account executive and creative talents received no more than the average wage of a common labourer, the advertising expense could be considered part of the ordinary expense of production and distribution. Now, Jim may understandably object to this line of argument to which I can only ask: isn't this just another way of saying "socially necessary labor time"? And one with an admittedly rude but tangible empirical measure. -- Sandwichman
