No, that's about it. An ongoing enterprise sells a product, which "earns" an income to be divided between those stakeholders allocated a share based on agreeing to have their labor managed, and those stakeholder allocated a share based on the social institution of property ownership.

The neoclassical fantasy was that there was something intrinsic about that allocation of the earned income between wage income and profit income, when it is, after all, a social system rather than a physical one. Many traditional marginalist economists still cling to that fantasy.

But as long as the fresh injections into the spending-income-spending loop are stable and the proportions leaking out of the same loop are stable, then any arbitrary allocation of profit and wages that allows those working in the ongoing enterprise to survive (whether they gain their allocation as a wage share, profit share, or mix of both), then that system is reproducible.

The sustainable steady state benchmark is a far more useful benchmark than the traditional economic fantasy of general equilibrium markets all around. A sustainable steady state is not sufficient for sustainability ... the system also has to be able to respond to shocks upsetting a sustainable steady state and settle back into a sustainable steady state ... but it sure as heck is necessary.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.