This is enough to rule out the idea that pay recovers neither maintenance nor depreciation. Does it say which is recovered? It does if we look at the cases of the boss and her secretary separately. Each earns the same pay throughout, and the boss earns ten times more. By the beginning of the last day, the human capital and work of each is negligible. Pay is all depreciation recovery if I am right, or all maintenance recovery if Quesnay was right, or maybe both. The boss’s pay, anyhow, remains ten times higher. Is that because her maintenance is ten time more, per
Quesnay, or because her depreciation is?
The answer is easy. I concede that the higher-paid usually consume more. But not always, and anyhow not in proportion and not because they have to. I learned in the quartermaster corps that the consumption needs of the general and the private are not much different. The commanding officer, in the field, is expected to be the last to eat, the last to sleep and the first up in the morning. Maintenance consumption, as opposed to the rest, is what we need to keep up strength and vitality and performance. We can’t make do with less. More pay is more motive, but need not be
spent on more consumption unless by choice.
The boss and her secretary are paid to apply skills. They are in trouble if the worth of those skills doesn’t cover their maintenance needs. But they will tap savings if it doesn’t. Retirees need no money motive to consume. All they need is the means. The source of skills applied is human capital. The application is gross realized work. The difference between its human depreciation and realized work components matters because the maximand is net output (work) rather than gross. But itis nota difference in kind. Skill applied is skill applied. Pay is all depreciation at the last second for the same reason as with the mortgage payment. There is no balance left
to earn interest.
This argues strongly that human depreciation is recovered in literal pay and
transferred to work products. It also argues that maintenance is not. The problem is
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