Talk:Compensation of employees

[Untitled]

The Criticism part seems a bit biased to me.

"The main criticisms made of the accounting concept of CE are that it can make workers' incomes look larger than they truly are, and that the main components of CE are not separately itemised in the accounts. What CE really contains is not made explicit." - Who makes these criticism? - How does it make workers' incomes look larger? It is not a measure of a workers income, but a measure of the actual costs that a business undertakes by having workers.

It then goes on with: "CE is not equal to gross wages, or real disposable income of workers, nor - strictly speaking - total labour costs." - We are never provided with any argument for why this is.

"When national accounts were originally designed, social insurance contributions were not so large, but as they have become large since that time, it is argued they ought to be separately itemised." - Why?

"At the very least, it is argued, a distinction must be drawn in the accounts between income actually received by workers, and deferred income (such as social insurance payments), and all imputations should be made explicit." - Who makes these arguments? What for?

Afterwards it is stated that: "In some countries, this is in fact done to some extent in national accounts, but in others, it isn't." - Which countries?

"A subsidiary criticism is, that the accounting concept of CE is biased towards employers - it makes it look like as though employees do not have all sorts of costs of their own with respect to their work, whereas in reality they do." - How is it biased towards employees? - This is backed up be a reference to an article in The Guardian, but I do not see the connection.

"... although in some countries national accounts will separately itemise this item. More often, self-employed income is itemised in the income & outlay accounts." - This is not documented at all.

Than the article goes on to look at CE from a Marxist economic point of view: "the CE aggregate does not separately itemise the earnings of higher corporate officers and managers, and it does not distinguish between different categories of employees." - How is this a criticism? It is just a statement.

"income by higher managers and executives in the form of profit-sharing or stock options should be included in gross profit." - Why? I see no reason for this? This distinction seems to be completely arbitrary. Why shouldn't profit-sharing or stock options for all employees be included in gross profit?

"no adequate distinction is made in the production account between paid productive and unproductive labour according to economic function; at best, earnings in different output-defined economic sectors are distinguished." - Again why? Ignoring that there is no clear distinction between "productive and unproductive labour", costs associated with the employee is still a cost.

"the CE concept contains class biases rather than making the incomes of different social classes explicit." - Which class biases? When compared to what?

"The effect, Marxian economists argue, is that the way incomes are really shared out in society is hidden rather than made explicit, and this problem is not overcome in supplementary income & outlay accounts. Very substantial reaggregation is required to obtain better measures of labor-remuneration in the real world. Thus, the overall effect is that the real rate of exploitation of labour is also obscured." - Again this is a measure of the cost undertaken by en employer by hiring an employee. It was never meant to describe anything like how "incomes are really shared out in society".

In the end there is a reference to feminist theory: "In Feminist theory, the omission of the value of housework and women's unpaid voluntary labour in the accounts is also criticized. Time use surveys reveal that paid labour is in reality dependent on a lot of unpaid voluntary labour, without which market economies could not function at all." - This might be so, but again this is not relevant to concept of CE at all.

All in all I think this is criticism section is full nonsense, statements and biases. Even worse: there are no sources (a part from a reference to an article in The Guardian) backing up any of the statements put forth.

I therefore suggest that someone updates this passage taking into account what I have outlined above. If this is not done I suggest that this section is deleted.

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