Re: Economic Rent in Terms of Risk Free Interest Rate

>>>Employment isn't labor. There is significant political
>>>interest in maintaining rates of employment, ala
>>>Bismarck.

>> So you contend that most of the people employed today are engaged in
>> unproductive make-work engineered by political forces that in no way
>> benefits the employer?



>In vast number. Most of this make-work is disguised as
>regulation or compliance. Some of it is simple
>headcount obsession. Some of it is just bad
>workflow engineering.

Technological progress and automation do not eliminate the need for a
labor force. We've heard that prediction for centuries now and it
never comes to pass. And I highly doubt that the existence of most
jobs in the economy are due to "regulation, compliance, headcount
obsession, and bad workflow engineering". Well, perhaps the latter,
but as a consultant I'm biased. ;-)

>It, of course, depends. How do you think the last five years'
>magickal "productivity gains" happened? This fraction has
>been reduced.

Have those productivity gains evaporated as the labor market recovered
over the past couple of years?


>>>Please note I said *marginal* factor - this
>>>according to Drucker as a direct component
>>>of COGS.


>> Perhaps in the modern industrial world, the traditional accounting
>> measure of COGS underrepresents labor's contribution to output. IOW,
>> in an environment where most workers are not involved in the _direct_
>> production of widgets or whatever else their employer happens to sell,
>> the traditional classification of their labor as "overhead" isn't
>> entirely accurate because it does not recognize the fact that their labor
>> does in some way allow the company to produce and sell more.



>Mismeasure is always a possibility, but from years
>of watching people work, I beleive the claim that
>labor is a declining fraction.

The way that labor is employed has changed, but the need for labor has
not.

.

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