{"id":1935,"date":"2004-01-12T09:41:03","date_gmt":"2004-01-12T13:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2004\/01\/12\/the-iron-law-of-wages\/"},"modified":"2004-01-12T09:41:03","modified_gmt":"2004-01-12T13:41:03","slug":"the-iron-law-of-wages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/01\/12\/the-iron-law-of-wages\/","title":{"rendered":"The Iron Law of Wages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a2264'><\/a><\/p>\n<table width=\"537\" border=\"0\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"537\">\n<p><em>William Pfaff has an interesting take on the work of 18th century economist<br \/>\n        David Ricardo. Ricardo argues that in a true open market, wages will<br \/>\n        tend to stabilize at subsistence level; any lower and workers will start<br \/>\n        to die or riot, any higher and jobs will tend to relocate in search of<br \/>\n        lower wages. Welcome to that brave new world.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\n        The iron law of wages is also simple and logical. It says that wages<br \/>\n          will tend to stabilize at or about subsistence level. That seemed inevitable<br \/>\n          to Ricardo, since while workers are necessary, and so have to be kept<br \/>\n          alive, they have no hope of any better treatment since they are infinitely<br \/>\n          available, replaceable, and generally interchangeable.<\/p>\n<p>        Ricardo&#8217;s wage theory has seemed untrue. The supply of competent workers<br \/>\n        in a given place is not unlimited; neither workers nor industry are perfectly<br \/>\n        mobile, and labor demonstrated in the 19th and 20th centuries that it<br \/>\n        could mobilize and defend itself. The iron law of wages would seem to<br \/>\n        function only if the supply of labor is infinite and totally mobile.<\/p>\n<p>        Unfortunately that day, for practical purposes, has now arrived, thanks<br \/>\n      to globalization.<\/p>\n<p>from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/cgi-bin\/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&amp;ArticleId=124402\">International Herald Tribune<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William Pfaff has an interesting take on the work of 18th century economist David Ricardo. Ricardo argues that in a true open market, wages will tend to stabilize at subsistence level; any lower and workers will start to die or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/01\/12\/the-iron-law-of-wages\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}