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."