There is wage theft, as in when an employer straight-up cheats employees: withholding tips, fixing worked hours, and making illegal deductions. There is a legal framework for dealing with that, and this is where unions (if they still exist) play a large role.
But the illustration above rightly goes beyond that. As Marx had it, all workers experience wage theft because exploitation and surplus labour are baked into the capitalist system. It is not an error but a feature.
And this is why Mr. Bezos can dabble in private, recreational space travel and why Mr. Musk could buy himself a president, although their fortunes are also the results of an abnormal stock market, plunder of public funds and downright crimes.
And consider this: an average CEO in the USA makes $326 an hour. CEOs generally take home 200 times what their workers do. Are they ‘working’ that much? Do they create that kind of value?
As the poet once said: ‘When the Chinese Wall was built, where’d the masons go for lunch?’
© Henning Bertram 2025