Abstract
In ancient economies where slave labour was the predominant form of labour, and for a long time after, when the material conditions of the labourer were not much better, the earnings of labour were viewed as not very different from the feed of horses. There were no ‘theories’ of wages but it was automatically supposed that they receive subsistence, certain fixed quantities of the necessaries of life. As working horses need to be maintained in adequate supply, the worker or the slave would be so provisioned as to be enabled to work and reproduce.
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Bharadwaj, K. (2018). Subsistence and Subsistence Wages. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1439
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1439
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