The Tron Law of Wages’

In offering profit sharing as a total cure for our economic woes, Mildred Adams’ “A Proposal to Halt Inflation” (NR, Nov. 23) may be oversimplifying the problem. Obviously, our drunken-sailor government, which creates new inflationary money to support a lot of things besides the wage-price spiral, will keep on shoveling out dollars to nonproducers as long as the welfarists remain in power. But Miss Adams’ proposition, which would keep any increase in labor’s rewards within productivity margins, would certainly do something to give us a habitable country.

It is astonishing to me that Miss Adams, during her three year campaign for profit sharing, should have met her most determined opposition from economists who claim to be of the Vienna school. They have argued, with some heat, that profit sharing goes against the normal workings of the market. Profits are supposed to be the rewards for risk, and if they are to be tampered with, then won’t investors be more chary about risking their capital? Labor, as one of the three factors of production (land and capital are the other two), puts itself up for sale in the market, and in classical theory it gets what is coming to it in the form of wages.

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

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In offering profit sharing as a total cure for our economic woes, Mildred Adams’ “A Proposal to Halt Inflation” (NR, Nov. 23) may be oversimplifying the problem. Obviously, our drunken-sailor government, which creates new inflationary money to support a lot of things besides the wage-price spiral, will keep on shoveling out dollars to nonproducers as long as the welfarists remain in power. But Miss Adams’ proposition, which would keep any increase in labor’s rewards within productivity margins, would certainly do something to give us a habitable country.

It is astonishing to me that Miss Adams, during her three year campaign for profit sharing, should have met her most determined opposition from economists who claim to be of the Vienna school. They have argued, with some heat, that profit sharing goes against the normal workings of the market. Profits are supposed to be the rewards for risk, and if they are to be tampered with, then won’t investors be more chary about risking their capital? Labor, as one of the three factors of production (land and capital are the other two), puts itself up for sale in the market, and in classical theory it gets what is coming to it in the form of wages.