Ever Wonder How Much Greater Is the Wealth We Produce than the Amount We're Paid to Produce It? Here's the Answer.
The rich treat the have-nots like dirt to make us think we deserve no better
A single simple arithmetic subtraction ($25.44 trillion minus $10.5 trillion = $14.9 trillion) spills the beans about class inequality in the United States.
The first number, $25.44 trillion, is the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States in 2022. The second number, $10.5 trillion, is the total of annual wages and salaries paid to employees in the United States in 2022.
Here is a definition of the GDP:
Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period.
Here is another equivalent definition explaining how raw materials are factored into the GDP:
Now think about the significance of the fact that GDP minus total wages and salaries = $14.9 trillion: Workers in the United States in 2022 were paid $14.9 trillion LESS than the value of what we produced in 2022.
This means that if the workers (the have-nots) had been paid the full value of what we1 produced2 instead of just the lesser amount we were actually paid, then there would have been 14.9 trillion more dollars in the pockets of the have-nots instead of in the pockets of the employers (who owned everything we produced) in 2022. If this extra $14.9 trillion had been distributed equally to every one of the 333 million people in the United States, it would have meant an extra $44,745 (not necessarily in the form of cash but possibly as ownership shares in various things) in every man, woman and child’s pocket in 2022. For a family of four, this would have meant an extra $178,979 in 2022.3
Just saying.
This is what class inequality means quantitatively. But in addition, and arguably far worse, is what class inequality means qualitatively: it means the have-nots get routinely and openly treated like dirt by the rich, as I discuss here with 23 concrete examples.
Now, for extra credit—doing it for the whole world:
The WORLD’s 2022 GDP is $100.6 trillion. The GLOBAL net income per capita (per person) in 2020 was $8741.97, and there was no substantial upward or downward trend from 2012 to 2020, so it is reasonable to use this figure for an educated guess for 2022. The world population in 2022 was 7.951 billion. This gives a total world income (wages and salaries) of $8741.97 times 7.951 billion = $69.5 trillion.
Subtracting, as done above for the U.S., but this time for the world, we have $100.6 trillion minus $69.5 trillion = $31.1 trillion that would, in 2022, have gone to the workers who produced the world’s wealth if they owned all the wealth they produced, but which went instead into the pockets of the employers who owned all of the wealth produced by their employees. As before, dividing $31.1 trillion by the 7.951 billion people of the world gives $3,911 that every man, woman and child in the world would have received in 2022 additionally if they had been paid the full value of what they collectively produced. Again, for a family of four this would mean it would have received in 2022 an extra $3,911 x 4 = $15,644.
Just saying.
Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement to abolish class inequality.
By “we” I include all of the have-nots, every man, woman and child, because collectively it is indeed all of the have-nots who produce the things the employers claim to own. Unpaid child-raisers are as necessary to the production of things as a person in a factory; and children are as necessary for the continued production of things as any person in a factory, even though the wage or salary check is made out to only the person in the factory (or mine or office or field.)
Note that for something produced in the United States, workers in the United States working in a mine or on a farm, etc., were essentially paid wages (or salaries) to produce the raw materials that were needed in the product, or else U.S. workers were paid to produce something that was traded with a foreign nation to obtain the needed raw materials. In other words, the statements in this paragraph are valid even taking into account the question of raw materials.
I’m rounding figures to the nearest dollar after doing calculations, in case you’re wondering.