“When we speak, therefore, of a class of commodities as produced under circumstances of equal competition, or as the result of labour and abstinence unassisted by any other appropriated agent, ... we do not mean to state that any such commodities exist, but that, if they did exist, such would be the laws by which their prices would be regulated.”[150] He takes up the example of the watch, a commodity adduced by McCulloch and others as having a value derived from labor cost alone, and shows that at every turn _rent_, of the diverse kinds he has defined, is paid out of its price.[151] 7. What is the net result of Senior’s argument for the labor-cost theory of value? In the first place, Senior had little to say about the difficulty of “fixed and circulating capital” which took so much of Ricardo’s time. The reason is simple. Of course the values of products are out of proportion to their labor costs, because of the different lengths of time required to produce them. Two goods may cost the same labor, but differ in value. “The principle is that, though in both cases the labour employed is the same, more abstinence is necessary in the one case than in the other.”[152] The great effort of Ricardo to force the facts into some conformity with the only philosophy of value he possessed, by asking us to consider “profits” an element about in proportion to wages cost, though they are not, becomes unnecessary from Senior’s view-point. The motive to undertake this forcing of facts is undermined. For “profits” stand on the subjective basis of “abstinence,” just as wages stand on the base of labor. Furthermore, according to Senior, land rent “enters into” price. So far, both “profits” of stock and rent of land exist to destroy the proportionality of values to labor cost. This is the result to which Malthus’s criticisms of Ricardo had led. But Senior’s criticism goes beyond Malthus’s. Wages, as an element in entrepreneur’s cost, are not even in proportion to the labor remunerated. That is to say, this is what Senior says if we keep his thought while reforming his language. He states that the actual income, which we always call _wages_, is really composed in many cases of wages, profits, and rent. He says this because he wishes to define wages as that remuneration which is in proportion to sacrifice. In this departure in terminology we cannot follow him. It is the whole wage of a laborer which is truly analogous to the rent of a physical unit of land. Different laborers, of different earning capacities, could be conceived of as ranged in a scale, so as to give a differential aspect to their incomes. Senior’s _rent to skill_ is really _an excess of wages_ over the amount required to be in proportion to disutility. As he himself wrote in one place: