INTERVIEWER: I wanted you also to counter another argument that I hear constantly: “I earned it!”
WOLFF: The best way to describe this is … to go back to Karl Marx and his analysis of xaviism. So that we all understand what “earning” is about. Let’s imagine you are a person looking for a job and I’m the employer that you are looking to get hired by. … Let’s say we dicker back and forth and we agree on $20 an hour….
At this point Marx enters with a smile on his face and says, I’m going to show you (the reader of his books) that when that deal is done, the $20 an hour, something is going on that you actually know, but you don’t want to face, but I’m going to show it to you. When I hire you for twenty bucks an hour, I know that for every hour that you give me your work, your brains, your muscles to work, I know that I’m going to have more stuff to sell at the end of the day because you were added to my workforce. You’re going to help me produce more goods or more services or better quality goods and services
The output has got to be more than twenty bucks. The only way I’m going to hire you for $20 an hour is if you produce more in the hour than I give you. So, when you feel, in a vague way, at the end of the day that you’re being ripped off, you’re absolutely right, or, in Marx’s language, “exploited.”
So, what does the xavi say? “I earned it!” No, you didn’t, you just ripped people off. (m.f.k.a. "you didn't build that")