Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/75

If there are any to whom I appear to be urging on behalf of labour a 'heads I win, tails you lose' policy, by insisting that a removal of the wage-lag is only good in a rising and not in a falling market, my reply is that I am not concerned with the wage-lag, as such, but only with its bearing upon the proportion between wages and profits. If I am right in holding that the under-consumption which visibly cramps the use of the full powers of industry is due in large part to the excessive share of the product which goes normally to 'capital' and the defective share which goes to labour, the removal of the wage-lag is only advantageous in so far as it reduces the aggregate amount of this maldistribution. It is consistent with this purpose to advocate the removal of the wage-lag only when that lag diminishes the share of labour.

But though this policy would, undoubtedly, reduce the cyclical fluctuations, and maintain a higher average as well as a more even state of production and employment, it would not in itself form a sufficient remedy. For the constant tendency towards overproduction, gluts, and stoppages, lies, as we have seen, in the existence of a surplus of unearned and