A Problem with Finances

Now, I'm no Marxist scholar, but here is how a friend of mine who is put it. He said capital must realize itself for it to work. I found the below on the Web.

The product is therefore not only a commodity, but a commodity pregnant with
surplus-value." ...

These commodities - "pregnant" now with
"surplus-value" - are "commodity capital." They must be sold - transformed into
money - to realize their "value" sufficiently not just to cover the "productive
costs" of wages, industrial materials consumed and the wear and tear of
production, but also to realize their "surplus value" sufficiently to cover the
capitalist's "unproductive costs" - such as overhead, rent, taxes, financial
expenditures - plus a profit. &

According to my friend, one problem with Capitalism is that its Capital is not going to be realized. That is because workers have less free time and smaller wages to spend. I added that workers need to be producers, but they also need to be consumers. They have less time and money to hold up the economy. We are not a big exporter, and so our markets can't expand outside our borders. We need money to be spent here, and that is falling.

I, myself, believe we will further lose our competitive edge due to the fact that workers have less free time in which to educate themselves with the skills of the new global economy. They should be taking adult ed classes, training programs, learning computer skills, and (God forbid) reading. The young are doing this, but the workforce is not only the young. We need to give more leisure time to workers for the sake of education. By the way, hobbies are productive in helping us learn.

So, more leisure time and greater wages will help us stem the loss of our economy. The key to a healthy, productive populace is a happy, rested populace. Let's start with that, and maybe later we can talk on Marx.