A Periodic Table of Economic Life
An opening sequence
The Wage
Three essays on the bargain over work.
Read them in sequence, or begin with a single question.
The three essays
From Volume I- 01
The Wage · Plate i
The Bargain
The wage as an unequal exchange; the asymmetry Adam Smith placed at the origin of the subject.
- 02
The Wage · Plate viii
The Monopsony
Employer power and the inversion; why a single buyer of labor pays below the worker’s worth, and the gap is the measure of its power.
- 03
The Wage · Plate ix
The Union
Collective bargaining and countervailing power; the workers’ combination as the answer to the employers’, and the case where it costs no jobs.
A way into Numéraire
Numéraire is a periodic table of economic life, developed across twenty-six subjects. This opening sequence brings together three complete essays from The Wage. Each keeps its place and plate number in the wider work.