labor creates all wealth
who could disagree with this?
All tangible wealth. There’s a lot of wealth that’s completely fabricated from the system with no labor connection. A house of cards.
Yes, but not all labor is physical. What about the intellectual labor it takes to develop the systems that make that company operate?
What does that have to do with anything? Unless you’re trying to insinuate that CEOs “labor” is intellectual labor and not just a bunch of rich kids in a made up position they received through nepotism jerking each other off at brunch about how “self-made” they are.
Why only list the lowest paid employee? What about the developers earning 200k per year? What about the lawyers, the managers, the designers, and the countless others making very high wages? All of this is possible because the company is well managed, and yes because of the manual labor at the bottom. If the wrong decisions are made at the top, the company fails and nobody gets paid. If the manual labor stops, the company pays a little more until someone is willing to do it. Both sides are important but it doesn’t simplify as easily as your picture implies. If labor is the true creator of wealth, then intellectual labor that multiplies other people’s output should be rewarded with a multiple of the wealth, no?
Then all value should be paid equally, in a manner where everyone can do more than just survive. We don’t think managing isn’t a skill, but there are many “managers” that are epitomes of the Peter Principle.