Three remarks on "Real wages and exploitation: A multi-period analysis of income distribution and productivity"

Abstract

Real wages, labor productivity, and the rate of exploitation are central variables in the study of income distribution, concepts with roots in classical political economy. This paper offers three remarks on Benítez (2026), which examines these variables over a sequence of production cycles. The first objective is to identify a limitation in two equations from that article used to calculate average labor productivity and its present value, and to state the condition under which both equations remain valid, namely that employment is constant throughout the reference period. The second objective is to address this limitation by reintroducing a previously published version of the first equation that does not require this condition, and by developing a new version of the second equation that likewise removes it. The revised equations are then applied to the same numerical examples used in the original article to compare results and to assess how allowing for employment growth changes the number of years required for the average real wage to reach a given level. The third objective is to note a minor error in the same article. The paper shows that once employment growth is taken into account, the required timeframes are generally shorter than those originally reported, although the broader conclusions of the article under discussion remain unaffected.