4 ms·

Being paid for labor is not usually considered "profit".

by conscion 3y ago

mcpackieh 3y ago
[flagged]
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  I'm sure most people who are employed make money from their employment but they're also not running a business which has "costs", "revenue" and, hopefully, "profit". They enter a contract with such a business which will treat the individual's salary as a "cost" which lessens the "profit" from the "revenue".
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > has profit been redefined by Marxists with some new "it's not profit when we do it" BS definition? Profit as the excess retained by or on behalf of capital owners is not a definition created by Marxists, using it for other things which are seen as loosely similar to that central goal of the most important property relation in capitalism is a newer, expansive, metaphorical use.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > Profit as the excess retained by or on behalf of capital owners > capital owners There it is, the "not when we do it" qualification. Just as I suspected, very predictable. Profit is when you're bringing in more money than you're spending. Whether you are labor or a "capital owner", profit is profit. When an animal gets more calories from their food than they spent to get it, even that is profit. Here's wiktionary's definitions: > (accounting, economics) Total income or cash flow minus expenditures. The money or other benefit a non-governmental organization or individual receives in exchange for products and services sold at an advertised price. There's no "capital owners" qualification in this or any other common definition: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/profit https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/profit https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profit https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profit
    - erik_seaberg 3y ago
      Aren’t wages typically taxed differently than revenue or profits?
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        If a worker's wages exceed his expenditures (housing, commute, food, bills, etc), then he's profiting. The tax code doesn't own the word.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  If you view a profit on a supply basis, as "the difference between the sold value of a good and the price to produce it", then somebody living paycheck to paycheck is, by definition, not profiting off of their labor. The cost of living, and thus be able to produce labor, is approximately the same as the amount they're being paid. If you view profit on a demand basis, profit is the difference between what the the seller values the good at and the value the buyer places on the good. In that regard, labor is never sold at a profit for the laborer: companies only purchase labor that they can use to produce more value than they pay for it. Framed another way, if the value of labor is the price the market is willing to pay for it, then employment is almost always a negative exchange for the worker. The value of someone's labor is the price that employers are willing to pay for it, and the price employers are willing to pay for the labor is greater than the wage the employee receives (because employing somebody is more expensive than just paying them a wage). All told, unless your definition of "profit" is indistinguishable from "money changes hands", workers don't profit from their labor.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Well yeah if you're treading water living paycheck to paycheck, then you're not making a profit. But anybody in that situation with an opportunity to make more money will jump at it, because the idea is to make more money than you're spending, e.g. to earn a profit.

Being paid for labor is not usually considered "profit".

mcpackieh 3y ago

[flagged]

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
I'm sure most people who are employed make money from their employment but they're also not running a business which has "costs", "revenue" and, hopefully, "profit". They enter a contract with such a business which will treat the individual's salary as a "cost" which lessens the "profit" from the "revenue".
dragonwriter 3y ago
> has profit been redefined by Marxists with some new "it's not profit when we do it" BS definition? Profit as the excess retained by or on behalf of capital owners is not a definition created by Marxists, using it for other things which are seen as loosely similar to that central goal of the most important property relation in capitalism is a newer, expansive, metaphorical use.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > Profit as the excess retained by or on behalf of capital owners > capital owners There it is, the "not when we do it" qualification. Just as I suspected, very predictable. Profit is when you're bringing in more money than you're spending. Whether you are labor or a "capital owner", profit is profit. When an animal gets more calories from their food than they spent to get it, even that is profit. Here's wiktionary's definitions: > (accounting, economics) Total income or cash flow minus expenditures. The money or other benefit a non-governmental organization or individual receives in exchange for products and services sold at an advertised price. There's no "capital owners" qualification in this or any other common definition: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/profit https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/profit https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profit https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profit
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    Aren’t wages typically taxed differently than revenue or profits?
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      If a worker's wages exceed his expenditures (housing, commute, food, bills, etc), then he's profiting. The tax code doesn't own the word.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
If you view a profit on a supply basis, as "the difference between the sold value of a good and the price to produce it", then somebody living paycheck to paycheck is, by definition, not profiting off of their labor. The cost of living, and thus be able to produce labor, is approximately the same as the amount they're being paid. If you view profit on a demand basis, profit is the difference between what the the seller values the good at and the value the buyer places on the good. In that regard, labor is never sold at a profit for the laborer: companies only purchase labor that they can use to produce more value than they pay for it. Framed another way, if the value of labor is the price the market is willing to pay for it, then employment is almost always a negative exchange for the worker. The value of someone's labor is the price that employers are willing to pay for it, and the price employers are willing to pay for the labor is greater than the wage the employee receives (because employing somebody is more expensive than just paying them a wage). All told, unless your definition of "profit" is indistinguishable from "money changes hands", workers don't profit from their labor.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Well yeah if you're treading water living paycheck to paycheck, then you're not making a profit. But anybody in that situation with an opportunity to make more money will jump at it, because the idea is to make more money than you're spending, e.g. to earn a profit.