Late Stage Capitalism

For an honest answer, it's because the green circle is too abstract. The others are numbers everyone sees on their paycheck.

So how do we unlock the green part for ourselves instead of giving it all to a rich twat?

I recognize what taxes pay for and I recognize even I get something from them. I dont mind that I live in one of the most taxed countries in the world because I'm not afraid of getting mugged every day, see no trash on the streets, have access to free healthcare and schools etc. Yeah, sure, the state is not an efficient way of doing things and it could be better but I also recognize that not everything is perfect. I don't see the reason to completely gut the state, have no taxes and hope a for profit, privatized, system will be better just because the state is inefficient or theres some corruption. Not a good enough reason imo. I'd think differently if the problems were more dire, but they just arent. Not here at least.

Profit? What does that get me? Companies find ways to evade paying taxes on them, then invest into ventures that extract more money from its populace (like real-estate). I recognize profit is kind of the driving force of the economy... I mean money needs to flow to other companies in form of investments which creates jobs but this isn't strictly a necessity. More often than not, its just hoarded by the top class. More often than not, its just theft. Profit is theft.

In a company you always have people that don't generate value itself, but are needed so you can freely work, like the IT.

The green part should still be smaller. However you can seize that part by going freelance.

My father feels that it is injust to say that because

1. They hired you
2. You need the job
3. How would they (the company) make any money if they gave the workers whatever wage they wanted

his response to people asking for better wages actively and talking about their value being stolen is 'why did you look/choose this job'

his idea of an union is essentially a single legal union, which can only strike when in agreement with the company (???)

and he is a landlord and was the factory manager, and would likely think differently if he didn't get the benefit of rent money from both the apartments and a shop downtown

Between 1995 and 2021, on average, US companies spent 78 percent of their net income on paying shareholders https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-strategy-and-corporate-finance-blog/share-repurchases-still-dont-prop-up-value

The same reason people running the company are trying to squish the yellow circle as much as possible.

It's so weird that Americans cling to feudal landlord mentality like a lifeline, and also call it "freedom".

And by landlord mentality I'm not just talking about conservative thinking. It also drives the idea that it's perfectly fine to learn skills by watching what other people do and then basing new work on it - but when software does that, it's "stealing". Righteous outrage! Not fair! That's mine! Just another form of landlordism, but it's the good kind! (as usual)

Personally, I've been trying to reduce both the green and the red to make my yellow bigger. This is possible because in my country, I can pay myself a moderate salary and still get health insurance. Then eventually I can pay myself dividends on the last year's profit when doing the annual financial report, and I can buy some things as business expenses (which makes them cost me about 60% less of my time compared to buying them as a private individual from post-tax income).

On the green front, I'm reducing it by 1) charging quite a bit of money for an hour of my time, definitely more than I got paid as a full-time employee 2) also having some foreign contracts where I can charge even more money and as a bonus, bring more money into my country

Now since all this still leaves me SIGNIFICANTLY less well-off than a lot of people who most certainly don't work 10, 100 or 100000 times harder than I do, this has actually turned me even more against capitalism than ever before (despite the fact that I literally make more money than I ever have before). I'm doing moderate tax optimization, about as much as I can do while still considering it ethical, work 200+ hours a month, and at the end of the day, while I might retire a millionaire, I'll never make it to a hundred million. Even 10 million is only possible with lucky breaks in investments.

Honest question: say it gets divided, who will decide on the right margin the company run with?