• Misha@mander.xyzOP
    4·
    3 years ago

    Thanks for the reference, I’ve added the book to my reading list.

    However,knowing the price of commodities are more closely correlated with labor-time than with profits (or ‘markups’;

    I see. Assuming that prices are mostly made up of labour costs (?), I “only” need to know the average hourly wage/salary in the supply chain-network of the products I consume could get me a rough estimate of the labour time that went into it.

    variations between prices and labor costs are, on average, 15%,

    Is this in Shaikh’s book? If so, do you maybe have a page reference for this? Do you mean that on average, prices are for 85% made up of labour costs? And the rest is profit [1] and rent [2]?

    [1] what workers effectively pay their bosses to be allowed to use their machines

    [2] what farmers need to pay to landowners to be able to use their land

    • snek_boi
      2·
      3 years ago

      Sure. I updated the original comment to include page numbers. I also suggest watching the video lectures. He covers this topic in his 10th lecture on the course based on the book.

      I’m still thinking about this, now that I revisited the topic, but I think it’s fair to say that prices of commodities are ‘composed’, on average, of 85% labor costs. The reason I’m not entirely sure is because it’s different to say that something deviates by an amount, and that one quantity is 85% of another. However, statements from his book like the following make me think it’s fair to use the ‘composed of’ meaning: “In this metric the distance between market prices and direct prices is about 15%, that between prices of production at the observed rate of profit and integrated labor times is about 13%, while that between market prices and production prices at the observed rate of profit is once again about 15%.” (Shaikh 2016, 439)