This article explores how the legal system has constructed, over time, the concept of the “wage”. Drawing on insights from classical political economy it contrasts a conception of the wage as the cost of social reproduction (a “social wage”), with the neoclassical notion of the wage as the price of a commodity (a “market wage”) that we see embedded in legal and political discourse today. Drawing on historical sources, it explores how these competing ideas of the wage have been reconstructed in juridical language in case law and legislation over time, exploring at the same time the impact of this process on the relationship between minimum wages and tax credits. This analysis is then used to shed light on the conception of the wage embedded in the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, providing a critical re-evaluation of the “National Living Wage” introduced in 2016.

中文翻译：

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了解最低工资：政治经济和法律形式

本文探讨了法律制度如何随着时间的推移构建“工资”的概念。借鉴古典政治经济学的见解，它将工资作为社会再生产成本的概念（“社会工资”）与我们认为的作为商品价格的新古典工资概念（“市场工资”）进行了对比。见嵌入今天的法律和政治话语。它借鉴历史资料，探讨了这些相互竞争的工资观念是如何随着时间的推移在判例法和立法中以法律语言重构的，同时探讨了这一过程对最低工资和税收抵免之间关系的影响。然后，该分析用于阐明 1998 年《国家最低工资法》中包含的工资概念，