Repost: All Wages are Subject to Wage Theft

Wage theft: the illegal withholding of wages or the denial of benefits that are rightfully owed to an employee. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft)

By its very nature the capitalist system of economics performs wage theft against all workers. If you don't believe me then ask yourself this simple question: How much money did the company you work for just make off your labor compared to how much they paid you for your labor? If that answer is anything more than zero then you are subject to the inherent wage theft present in capitalism.

I work for a testing company. We administer tests to individuals seeking to be doctors, accountants, teachers, and an indescribably large number of others. My wife, being a teacher, had to take the PRAXIS test to get her certification. This test cost her $150 for four hours of her time. When I am administering this test I make $9 and hour adding up to $36 and my coworker (only two of us work at the same time) made the same. That means to administer my wife's test earned my company $78. My testing center has 12 seats which are full almost all day. In that four hour period if all the seats are full that means my company gained $1728 in four hours of testing. Since they only have to pay us essentially for administering only one of the tests, all the tests after the first one are pure profit. The average cost of electricity required to run the testing stations is around $400 a month. Rent on the facility is roughly $3000 a month meaning that fixed expenses on for the same four hour time period are roughly $20. This puts total profit for my company in a four hour period of simply PRAXIS tests (and trust me most of the tests cost A LOT more than the PRAXIS) at $1708.

This $1708 under socialism would be required to be redistributed to me and my coworkers since we are the only reason the money was earned in the first place. But instead, under capitalism, all that money is put into the hands of the company in order to pay dividends and pay the exorbitant salaries and bonuses of the company's executives (and I personally know one of the executives and, while a great guy, he definitely has no financial need for all of the money he earns). Meanwhile me and my coworkers earn a yearly wage that is below the poverty line and most of us have to get government aid in order to survive.

So next time you perform a task at work just remember this: As long as you are working under capitalism you are not getting the wage you truly deserve.