Work and Wages: How We Can Work Less and Make More

The conventional wisdom of economists, which has trickled down to the rest of us, is that “the market” ensures that we are all paid what we are worth. But rapidly increasing income inequality and the widening gap between wage gains and productivity growth both suggest that the relationship between work and wages is more complicated, that we are worth more than we are paid. The first session of "Economics for Working People" presented by the Labor Lyceum explores these complications and offers an alternative “power theory” of wages: the bargaining power of workers, not the “marginal productivity of labor,” determines how much we are paid.