wage-unit

The tendency of the wage-unit was, as usual, steadily upwards on the whole, but the efficiency of labour was also increasing.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

W the wage-unit, and N the quantity of employment,

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

If we allow ourselves the simplification of assuming that the rates of remuneration of the different factors of production which enter into marginal cost all change in the same proportion, i.e. in the same proportion as the wage-unit, it follows that the general price-level (taking equipment and technique as given) depends partly on the wage-unit and partly on the volume of employment.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

Perhaps the most important element in marginal cost which is likely to change in a different proportion from the wage-unit, and also to fluctuate within much wider limits, is marginal user cost.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

For the purposes of the real world it is a great fault in the quantity theory that it does not distinguish between changes in prices which are a function of changes in output, and those which are a function of changes in the wage-unit.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

The fact that, given the general economic situation, the expenditure on consumption in terms of the wage-unit depends in the main, on the volume of output and employment is the justification for summing up the other factors in the portmanteau function

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

If the domestic rate of interest falls so low that the volume of investment is sufficiently stimulated to raise employment to a level which breaks through some of the critical points at which the wage-unit rises, the increase in the domestic level of costs will begin to react unfavourably on the balance of foreign trade, so that the effort to increase the latter will have overreached and defeated itself.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

In actual experience the wage-unit does not change continuously in terms of money in response to every small change in effective demand; but discontinuously.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

F (x) /F '(x), being the value of the output of the wage-goods industries in terms of the wage-unit, is the same as my

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003

As a first approximation, therefore, we can reasonably assume that, if the wage-unit changes, the expenditure on consumption corresponding to a given level of employment will, like prices, change in the same proportion; though in some circumstances we may have to make an allowance for the possible reactions on aggregate consumption of the change in the distribution of a given real income between entrepreneurs and rentiers resulting from a change in the wage-unit.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 2003