Note 203 — Chapter XI · THE ULTIMATE RELATION OF COST TO VALUE

Senior’s rent to skill is an entirely different form of surplus from that due to the excess of utility produced above disutility incurred in the “earlier” parts of the working day of all labor. So long as the length of the working day is left to the worker himself, he will stop when the terminal utility and disutility are equivalent. All previous parts of the day produce a surplus of utility. This is the surplus which occupies an important place in J. B. Clark’s theory of value. Compare Marshall’s “producer’s” and “consumer’s rents.” Senior’s “rent to scarce natural talents” is explicable only on the supposition that the disutility endured and the return of utility enjoyed by a skilled laborer can be compared with the same quantities for an unskilled laborer. Senior means merely that skilled laborers obtain higher returns at lower sacrifices as compared with unskilled. A certain part of the return enjoyed by the skilled laborer is equivalent to that enjoyed by the common worker; the part in excess of this is the rent. Senior considers it analogous to the rent which goes to lands of superior fertility. Further consideration will be given in a later section to the relation of skill to the labor theory of value.