I feel like a primer on Labour Theory of Value is important in this thread. This a debunked theory that is still being used by populists to justify their anger on the System TM and in particular, the billionaires.

Folk LTV interpretation is that people's wages are supposed to be proportional to their hours worked. Obviously this is false -- everyone knows this but people still repeat it because it has populist memetic value.

That LTV is debunked and proved to be useless is very easy to demonstrate -- the single person (who was a Marxist) who took this theory seriously abandoned it. He's not the only one though.

I asked ChatGPT this: "who is the single one contemporary person who took labour theory of value seriously in an academic sense?"

ChatGPT: G.E Cohen.

(G.E Cohen is an Analytical Marxist BTW)

Here's what G.E Cohen has to say specifically on LTV:

1. "labour theory is, moreover, false" [1]

2. "The labour theory of value is not a suitable basis for the charge of exploitation laid against capitalism by Marxists, and the real foundation of that charge is something much simpler which, for reasons to be stated, is widely confused with the labour theory of value." [2]

[1] https://andrewmbailey.com/money/readings/cohen

[2] https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3128-the-labour-theory...

So here you have the one guy who took this flawed concept seriously, * from the side of Marxism * and then has to conclude that it is false.