[jecjec]

On the average of millions of privately arranged employment agreements, the employee's marginal value absolutely (slightly) exceeds their salary. You have to make a strong case that the labor market does not exhibit the properties of close to perfect competition: there are many buyers, and many sellers, of labor.

Sure, there are obviously exceptions to this calculation in both directions: how else can you explain Marissa Mayer's severance package? How else can you explain DHH's wage of $0 for maintaining Ruby on Rails?

If you can make a compelling case on this topic you can probably get published in major academic journals.

[panic]

> On the average of millions of privately arranged employment agreements, the employee's marginal value absolutely (slightly) exceeds their salary.

Are you saying this based on data? The actual labor market is very different from the abstract, perfectly competitive microeconomics model. It's hard to even figure out what the marginal value of a person's work is, not to mention the lack of perfect information, the difficulty of firing, the expectations around raises and pay cuts, people's varying self-conceptions of their own worth, …