“Hard Work Never Killed Anyone” and Other Capitalist Lies
You can get a job with “good pay” or one with “bad pay.” But you can’t get a job with a “fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.”
Why? Because the bosses don’t pay you for the actual work you do. They only pay you for your ability to work.
If they paid for the work you do – what you actually produce – South African gold miners would be driving Lamborghinis. Youth flipping burgers at McDonalds (or any other fast-food joint) would be rolling in money.
Let’s look at McDonalds.
Let’s concentrate on the burgers. Put the fries and soft drinks aside to keep things simple. We are using prices from around the year 2000. Today the prices are higher, but the ratios will be similar.
Back then the franchise aimed to sell 147 hamburgers per hour at $2.09 each. That meant taking in $308 every hour just on burgers alone.
It took seven workers and one manager – a crew of eight – to make the burgers. Seven members of crew earned $11 per hour and the manager got $15. Collectively we were paid $92.
Working together, our crew made $308 worth of hamburgers every hour but only got $92 in pay. The owner got $216 every hour. There’s nothing fair about that! It’s called exploitation. The owner lives off the labor of their workers.
There’s more. The owner does not pocket all that $216. They have to buy the raw materials (bread, meat. electricity etc.), take some for themself (profit), pay a tiny portion for Government (taxes), and pay some to Corporate Headquarters (franchise rent). On top of that, bankers will end up with some of it as interest for the money borrowed to buy grills, fryers, and refrigerators to start the business.
Marginal or central?
All this creates a picture where the worker isn’t marginal or unimportant. Seen through the lens of exploitation, the worker is central to the economy.
Unskilled. semi-skilled, and skilled wage workers create all the wealth in society. The bulk of that wealth goes to the capitalists and their elite managers. The workers get only the smaller part of that wealth in the form of their wages.
If the exploited (wage) workers create all the wealth and all the useful things in society, why don’t we run the society we build?
If we look at it as an individual, the bosses give us jobs so we can earn wages to live. From this point of view, we need the bosses. But looking at it as a collective, the wealth we create supports ourselves as well as all the bosses (and their capitalist system). The bosses need us. We don’t need the bosses!