A different way of putting this is that as capital rises in importance, labor loses its bargaining power. You can see that happening in the economy in recent decades. Corporate profits have skyrocketed as advances in technology have allowed corporations to make more things and sell them to more people. At the same time, the share of the profits going to labor — to workers — has fallen, as this graph from the Atlantic's Derek Thompson shows:
Capsule version of Piketty.
Transformers 4 is a master class in economics
Ezra Klein
"At the same time, the share of the profits going to labor — to workers — has fallen"
ReplyDeletePayroll comes before profits... labor is not compensated out of "profits"...
And this graph of profit growth looks suspiciously like the same for the price of a bbl of petroleum...
rsp,