To pay for Labour's spending would mean substantial tax rises over and above those that the Chancellor actually told us about.
Car buyers pay for labour, steel and paint, but the price sticker may not reflect the full cost of the noxious goo the car factory spills into a river.
Economists used to say no: if employers have to pay more for labour, they use it less.
Villagers seeking work abroad sometimes have to pay touts and labour contractors large sums to get a passport.
But it also says, foolishly, that it will roll back reforms on pensions, dismissal of workers, sick pay and casual labour.
It encourages jealousy and spurious comparisons, and detracts attention from the two factors that should determine pay: local labour market conditions, and performance.
The president of the RMT union, Alex Gordon, says Mr Balls's decision to back the public sector pay freeze will cost Labour votes.
Andrew George (Lib Dem, St Ives) attempted a synthesis of the two themes: regional pay was bad and Labour had let it happen - but perhaps they hadn't really meant to.
Whereas workers' pay depends on the labour market (and has been kept down by the huge numbers of people joining the global economy), managers' bonuses are chiefly tied to returns on capital.
The power of trade unions has been reduced, national pay bargaining and other labour-market rigidities scrapped, and cuts in tax rates and stricter rules for claiming unemployment benefits have improved the incentive to work.
Britain's corporate taxes are in fact not all that high, according to a study by the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accounting firm, which looks at the percentage of earnings that companies pay overall (including labour taxes).
If income is declining, which it is both because vacancy rates are rising and also because local councils are cutting the amounts they are willing to pay for care, labour is a fixed cost, then obviously rent needs to be reduced to avoid bankruptcy.
In his Autumn Statement, the chancellor asked pay review bodies to "consider how public sector pay can be made more responsive to local labour markets", which could mean scrapping national pay rates for public sector workers and negotiating them locally.
Not for us the spend today, pay tomorrow approach into which Labour are now falling.
There are increasing reports that firms are finding it hard to recruit skilled labour, and pay settlements are creeping up.
The leading case, Alden v Maine, was brought by a group of Maine probation officers suing for back pay under a 1938 federal labour law.
This is not a bad idea: such a fund could lead to a shift from contributions linked to pay, which drive up labour costs (and unemployment).
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Furthermore, Mr Brown can argue that a tweak up in interest rates is a small price to pay for the stability that Labour's economic policies have provided.
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"You are using labour and you should pay for it adequately, " Mr Muchima said.
Moreover, so long as productivity is rising, firms can cut unit labour costs even without pay cuts.
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He pointed out Labour had introduced local pay variations in the Courts Service, but then he adopted a rather contradictory line.
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They were as appalled by the prospect of regional pay as the members opposite but Labour needed to do the decent thing and fess up to the fact that their own reforms had given trusts the power to pursue this option.
Much depends upon whether pay pressures are building up in the labour market.
After the Black Death killed a third of the population of medieval Europe, labour scarcity forced landowners to pay their workers better.
There, deep cuts in unemployment benefit and sickness pay have been made, while limited labour-market reforms have helped push down unemployment to little more than half German levels.
In these models, inequality was seen as a problem of pay differences, best addressed through taxes on labour incomes.
The pay that a worker can receive for their labour is limited, at the upper end, by the value of what they produce.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said the pay increases were part of a "something for nothing" culture, since the stock market had not risen to match them.
Its principal theme was stated by Labour: the move towards regional pay deals by a consortium of NHS trusts in the South West was a thoroughly bad thing.
When his scarlet uniform became a bit tatty he asked Dennis Healey, the chancellor of the exchequer in the then Labour government, if it would pay for a replacement.
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