this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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The top 10% of households hold 67% of all wealth. If we assume that every worker produces roughly the same value, that implies ⅔ of value produced by the average worker is being taken.
Of course, 33% is not 15%, but I'd say it's roughly in the ballpark. And in certain cases, there are definitely workers who are exploited to that level.
Wealth is not income. You can't derive the rate of exploitation from wealth inequality.
I mean lol again. Especially if you need to stretch as far as the top 10%. Doctors, surgeons, electricians, linemen, plumbers, veterinarians, dentists, engineers, etc are all going to be producing more than double the value of your average retail worker.
The only way to create wealth is via work, e.g., income. It's not a perfect measure, I concede, since wealth is static and can accumulate over time. However, I think we can still use it as a rough estimation of stolen income over time.
However, this source claims there is a 70% gap between wages and produced value. That roughly matches the number I gave.
That is not what that data is or says.
158 is not 30% of 285 for starters.
~~Total wages paid are a bit over half of gdp. 55% is notably quite a bit more than 15%.~~ Think I had gdp from a different year than wages, still closer to accurate than 85%
*the fact that somebody completely misreading a graph and claiming it as a source is getting upvoted is about to turn me into a liberal out of embarrassment. Like damn, I guess there was negative exploitation in 1970. Neoliberals might be evil but at least they usually appreciate nuance and factuality more than ideological improv. The online left can never settle for reality, everything has to be embellished. Every injustice has to be 'yes, and'ed until society would actually fluorish under a new golden age where we all work 10 seconds per week if you just got rid of landlords.
literally feelings over facts.