CP: When a wage earner is paid for work they are not paid by the number of hours but by the value they put into that hour. This iswhy those that add more value to the hour are paid more. How much are you willing to pay for someone to sweep the floor vs. how much for someone to repair your severed arm. Obviously the value put into an hour of surgery is not the same value as an hour of sweeping.SDF: This is a misconception of the price of labor under capitalism. People are paid more under capitalism not because "they add more value," but rather because they can get away with charging more for their labor. Lawyers, for instance, can earn enormous amounts of money for their services, but the "value" they "add" to the sum total of wealth is zero -- any wealth one may gain as a result of hiring a lawyer is as a result of taking away that wealth from someone else, not as a result of the lawyer's adding value to any resource one can care to name.
The point of confusion is in understanding the difference between use-value and exchange-value. Use-value is the value that is added in productive labor -- if I take a certain quantity of yarn and I spin a coat from that yarn, I have used my labor to add value to a raw material, so that myself or some other person may guard his/her body against cold weather. Exchange-value, on the other hand, is the final arbiter in the determination of PRICE. I might be able to sell my coat for $2, if I am a Guatemalan peasant selling her wares on the street, or I might be able to sell my coat for $200, if I have access to a boutique in a wealthy, industrialized nation, in a neighborhood frequented by people who have the wherewithal and the willingness to spend $200 for my coat.
Extremely high profit margins can be made by opportunistic corporations by paying labor next to nothing for its added value while exploiting the high exchange-values promoted through aggressive advertising campaigns. Nike, for instance, hires teenage Vietnamese girls at 20 cents per hour, making shoes that net the company maybe $70 apiece in the US. The fact that Nike shoes are advertised by Michael Jordan, the Brazilian national soccer team, Pete Sampras etc. etc. does nothing to increase their use-value as shoes, though its effect on their EXCHANGE-VALUE is apparently worth the millions the above sports superstars are paid to advertise Nikes.
The misconception that "you're paid what you're worth" functions discursively to justify capitalism as an ethical force paying everyone in proportion to his or her "added value," whereas in reality what really calls the shots is the system of prices. The system of prices disproportionally benefits those who can manipulate the propensity to spend of those blessed with plenty of money. And money is ultimately a power guaranteed to individuals through the intervention of the government.
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