| This question <41|162-1> overall <43|45> Rudeman: <480|184-11>. |
| Question 93: Does skilled labor (i.e., labor for which schooling and training is necessary, for instance the labor of an engineer) produce more value per hour than unskilled labor (like the labor of a janitor)? Explain! |
| [44] Rudeman: Value of Labor From the reading I would definitely agree that skilled labor or trained labor provides more value per hour than unskilled labor. Hans classifies in the text unskilled labor as the simple labor everyone in the given society is able to perform. The skilled labor is where someone has been trained. The training of that individual, for whatever capacity it might be, began with an incredible amount of labor input in the first place. Labor hours must be calculated for the time the instructors put in for learning the material themselves and the time that was spent creating the materials for the training. |
| The result of a trained laborer is to be able to work at producing a good that someone couldn't produce if they hadn't been trained. The text uses the example of a surgeon. No unskilled laborer could perform the job of a surgeon unless they had been trained. Anyone in society has the capacity to be a janitor. There are no inputs necessary to train an individual to be a janitor. His labor could be considered 1x. 1 multiplied by the number of hours (x) he works. In the case of a surgeon or an engineer there are many inputs that are necessary to prepare this skilled laborer. Because of these inputs the value of their labor per hour is more. The labor power of a surgeon or an engineer could be considered 2x or even 3x the labor power of an unskilled laborer. |
| Hans: This is a good explanation of the issues. Your grade suffered because you did not make any reference to [40] and [41] which answered the same Question. There is a lot of overlap with [41], and it would have been good to explain in what way your answer differs from [40]. |
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