The first argument below is numbered 5 because it follows the four arguments in support of proposition 2.17: only individuals and non-commercial associations receive income and save.
1. Total income (TI) is, by definition, equal to the sum of total placement income (TPI) and total labor income (TLI).
Noting TI = TPI + TLI does not however mean that it is the addition of TPI to TLI that determines TI.
2. Any variation in TPI relative to TI is accompanied by a variation in the opposite direction of TLI relative to TI.
If, for example, the TPI goes from 15% to 10% of the TI and then goes back up to 20%, then the TLI goes from 85% to 90% and then goes back down to 80% of the GR.
3. Let us call wages the total labor income (TLI) and, for a moment, "profits" the total placement income (TPI).138
More Profits makes fewer wages, and vice versa, on the macronomic scale of total income (TI). But this is only at the level of a country or a group of countries. Larger or smaller earnings do not always mean less or more wages on the mesonomic scale of an enterprise, or a group of enterprises. It is not by anomaly that quite often wage increases granted by an enterprise contribute to an increase in that enterprise's earnings, both in absolute and relative terms. A theory of wages that does not take these realities into account is false.