There is no longer any room for the analytical distinctions that Ricardo or Marx made about a worker’s contribution to production, let alone the exploitation of that worker. You are valuable because what you provide is scarce. Because we are rational utility calculators in the face of scarcity, we don’t let things go to waste. Workers might choose unemployment because that gives them more marginal utility than working for that or a given wage. The corollary of this logic is that unemployment is voluntary. Voluntary unemployment arises from viewing economic agents as rationally choosing between
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