this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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85% is a bit of an overestimate, but not by all that much. For the United States, total wages paid by companies to employees are about 11 trillion, out of a GDP of 29 trillion (stats from a year or two ago). This doesn't count sole proprietorships and partnerships, but the high-end estimate is 62%.
@draco_aeneus@mander.xyz's implication that wealth follows linearly from income isn't super rigorous, but it does match up closely enough in this case.
If you have a Materially Productive Job and you have the ability + information required to calculate how much revenue a worker contributes to the company, you'll know that this checks out. I wouldn't expect everyone to be adequately positioned and also care enough in order to have that insight though.
Nitpicking whether the executive and shareholders appropriate 85% or 50% of value is pointless. It's a huge amount, it's far more than income taxes, and it is the most important dynamic of the capitalist economy. And it is further corroborated with reports (from mainstream/orthodox sources) over the past year of how the majority of consumer spending is done by the rich.
85% vs 50% is a massive difference. It would be the difference between a 20 hour work week and a 6 hour work week.
Both those possibilities (20h work week and 6h work week) sound great. The prospect is either working less, or working the same amount and keeping the monetary value of your labor, as opposed to working full-time just to pay 3/4 of your income just sustaining your existence, which goes straight to landlords or bigger companies.
And if you can arrange a living that avoids the most common money traps, you can easily get by with 20 hours of work per week or less. I've certainly done enough juggling of part-time jobs to know this.