> You've been told a lie. Productivity has increased every step of the way even as populations shrink and the elderly cohort grows. Most of those productivity gains, i.e. the added value produced by each worker, has gone to shareholders' profits.

You mean our pension funds?

Surplus value is a propaganda myth from Marx along with other trivially disproven delusions like LVT. Tell me what work is being done by whom in a wine cellar as the vintage matures after harvest?

"Reasonable" is doing herculean amounts of work as usual, as it is implicitly operating under a thief's logic that the target didn't really deserve it anyway therefore if I steal all of it I will be justified.

We see the same shit when regiemes 'nationalize' segments of the economy and then wonder why instead of miraculously getting better without the 'exploiters' things turn to shit and absolutely nobody wants to trade with them. Empathy such a foreign concept to them that they don’t understand why merchants refuse to trade with those who steal businesses wholesale. Whose only response when confronted about their crimes is lame whataboutisms and victim blaming.