The net incomes in the economy accrue to labor in wages, to landowners in ground rents (both wages and ground rents being “rents,” i.e., unit-prices of productive factors), to capitalists in interest—all of which continue in the ERE—and profits and losses to entrepreneurs, which do not. (Ground rents are capitalized in the capital value of land, which therefore earns the interest rate in the ERE.) But what of the owners?

A particularly important category of laborer-entrepreneurs is that of the sellers of personal services to consumers. These laborers are generally capitalists as well.

We have seen that a musician or a doctor earns wages without being an employee; the wages of each are implicit in the income that he receives, even though they are received directly from the consumers.

In the free economy, there is an explicit time market, labor market, and land-rent market. It is clear that while chaos would ensue from a world of producers’ co-operatives, other critical points even before that would, as it were, introduce little bits of chaos into the productive system. Thus, suppose that workers are separated from capitalists, but that all capitalists own their own ground land. Further, suppose, that for one reason or another, no capitalist will be able to rent out his land to some other firm.

We have seen the basis on which the prices of the factors of production and the interest rate are determined. Looked at from the point of view of an individual entrepreneur, payments to factors are money costs. It is clear that we cannot simply rest on the old classical law that prices of products tend, in the long run, to be equal to their costs of production. Costs are not fixed by some Invisible Hand, but are determined precisely by the total force of entrepreneurial demand for factors of production.

In the case of a labor factor, the particular demand curve for its use will slope downward, and the particular supply curve of a labor factor for a specific use will slope upward to the right. In fact, since labor is the relatively nonspecific factor, the particular supply curve of a labor factor is likely to be flatter than the supply curve of the (usually more specific) land factor. Thus, the particular supply and demand curves for a labor factor may be as represented in Figure 63.

Great care must be taken in dealing with the productivity concept. In particular, there is danger in using a term such as “productivity of labor.” Suppose, for example, we state that “the productivity of labor has advanced in the last century.” The implication is that the cause of this increase came from within labor itself, i.e., because current labor is more energetic or personally skillful than previous labor. This, however, is not the case.

It is “total wage rates” that are determined on the market. They tend to be equalized on the market and to be set at the DMVP of the worker. Total wage rates are the money paid out by the employer for labor services. They do not necessarily correspond to the “take-home pay” of the worker. The latter may be called the “overt wage rates.” Thus, suppose that there are two competing employers bidding for the same type of labor. One employer, Mr. A, pays out a certain amount of money, not in direct wages, but in pension funds or other “welfare” benefits.