Basically the value of a commodity is calculate by c + v + s. c being constant capital (the value of the means of production that has been degraded to create the commodity, hard to calculate without good info), v is the amount of paid labor (variable capital), and s being surplus value is the unpaid labor.
To calculate the value of your labor all you need to know is the constant capital used to produce whatever commodity you produce and the value of said commodity. By including your wage as v you can calculate the surplus value and then compare them to see what share of the value you produce you actually recieve.
It gets harder when you aren’t directly producing commodities which my friend was.
I did the same using GDP. About 10 years ago the numbers were like this in Canada: the average income was $56k the average tax burden is $7k and the GDP per WORKER was $90k. It’s so funny to watch people complain about the $7k the hobby takes to build society when you ignore the $44k in profit you generate for the rich.
The beauty of the stepped back approach is that because all wages are included and all economic output is captured you don’t need to solve for c, it’s included in wages and surplus value.
The machinery of capital is built on a large pile of labor + stolen surplus value all the way down to the raw material. So it’s all captured with the above.
Haha, you should try using the median income to adjust for outlier skewing. Also while it is true that constant capital becomes variable capital if you follow the production chain you should keep in mind that much of this production is done in the imperial periphery (and therefore not necessarily reflected in GDP per capita). Their exploitation is directly responsible for the purchasing power of our wages, in a way an hour of our labor purchases many many hours of theirs. If you are going to eliminate constant capital through the means suggested in your process, then you need to include the wages of workers of the periphery (often below the value of their labor power) in your average.
Okay so I was gonna respond sooner but I was super baked and unable to answer this when I saw it last night.
You should read Wage Labour and Capital by Marx for some added context, it is short.
Basically the value of a commodity is calculate by c + v + s. c being constant capital (the value of the means of production that has been degraded to create the commodity, hard to calculate without good info), v is the amount of paid labor (variable capital), and s being surplus value is the unpaid labor.
To calculate the value of your labor all you need to know is the constant capital used to produce whatever commodity you produce and the value of said commodity. By including your wage as v you can calculate the surplus value and then compare them to see what share of the value you produce you actually recieve.
It gets harder when you aren’t directly producing commodities which my friend was.
I did the same using GDP. About 10 years ago the numbers were like this in Canada: the average income was $56k the average tax burden is $7k and the GDP per WORKER was $90k. It’s so funny to watch people complain about the $7k the hobby takes to build society when you ignore the $44k in profit you generate for the rich.
The beauty of the stepped back approach is that because all wages are included and all economic output is captured you don’t need to solve for c, it’s included in wages and surplus value.
The machinery of capital is built on a large pile of labor + stolen surplus value all the way down to the raw material. So it’s all captured with the above.
Haha, you should try using the median income to adjust for outlier skewing. Also while it is true that constant capital becomes variable capital if you follow the production chain you should keep in mind that much of this production is done in the imperial periphery (and therefore not necessarily reflected in GDP per capita). Their exploitation is directly responsible for the purchasing power of our wages, in a way an hour of our labor purchases many many hours of theirs. If you are going to eliminate constant capital through the means suggested in your process, then you need to include the wages of workers of the periphery (often below the value of their labor power) in your average.