It's the questions, boy, it's the questions

Why do we assign businesses the important task of keeping people alive?

Why do businesses invest?

Do we care why they invest if we know their investment is prone to uncertainty?

Are they investing now?

Is the profit rate falling?

What is the role of a business?

Why do we assign businesses the important task of keeping people alive?  

Wages

From "Unlevel Playing Fields" by Randy Albelda, Robert Drago, and Steven Shulman

"if it takes me three hours to make a vest using the current level of techology, and I have what is considered to be the average skill in the industry, then I should be able to trade that vest for a chair that takes the same amount of time to make...Instead, workers offer their time... and in exchange they recieve a wage...Labor time must be worth the amount of time that it takes to "produce" a worker given the current context (i.e. the amount of time needed to support a worker and his or her family as the customary standard of living). The amount of time required to produce a worker is then a social and cultural relation, a matter of conflict over the coustomary standard of living.  If the customary standard of living requires a DVD player and a car, then the wage bill will reflect that."