Stolen? Are you sure?
You are completely ignoring the cost of capital and the initiatives and the entrepreneurship of the capitalists.
BTW, nobody is stealing anything from workers. Workers work willingly.
Who is taking the risk? Capitalists or workers?
The risk in any venture is correlated with the potential ROI. What do workers risk? Not being bored at work?
Why do you think the Apple employees deserve the 400k/year? Who risked their capital? Apple employees or the capitalists who own the company?
Do you want to benefit from Apple success? Buy the APPL stock.
PS. BTW, workers control the value of their labor. They ask for wages or salaries. Where did you get this idea that workers are not in control of their lives or their labor? In democratic societies, we are all free to pursue whatever we desire as long as it is legal. You can go to university, get your Ph.D., start your own company, hire people who can be trained and help them better their lives. Run your company, invest and retire early. Nobody is stopping you.
Capitalists take much more than the cost of capital. If they only took the cost of capital, that would be fair and no one would be complaining. Its misleading to say workers choose to work for capitalists,
they work or starve. That is
coercion. This is why homelessness and poverty are necessary for sustaining capitalism. If you ended them, there wouldn't be a viable threat to coerce people into accepting these predatory work agreements. This is why there is so much slander of anything remotely socialist. Any policy that might help people take control of their lives (funds for welfare, education, healthcare or starting your own business) is an existential threat to capitalism as we know it.
I'm glad you brought up risk because capitalists don't really risk much at all. They risk not making as much money as they could have made elsewhere. Thats it. Meanwhile, workers risk everything. They risk their life. If a machine blows up, capitalists aren't going to lose a finger, an arm, or their lives. Capitalists aren't going to develop cancer because of the conditions in their factories. Capitalists aren't going to fall to their death at work. It is workers who risk the most.
If apple workers paid the company for the capital and kept the phones, they would be arrested.Workers have no control. They live under dictatorship of the capitalist above them.
A worker cannot decide to work in a different way because the current way is a bit too dangerous. A worker cannot decide to stay home when they feel like it. Their only decision is which capitalist they will work for.
The bold quote is very out of touch for most of the working class. This is something true for people born into the capitalist class. Working class people cannot afford to stop working. They cannot afford expensive graduate tuition and they certainly do not have the capital to start their own company or they wouldn't be working class, they'd be capitalist class.
It may be true to say that anyone could become capitalist class but capitalism requires most people to be working class.
Are we in the 1920s? Are you sure? Who in the western countries works because they starve? Most work because they have mortgages, car loans, and cc debt and no income-generating investments. Food is cheap and abundant.
There are so many opportunities in the capitalist societies that is just not funny anymore.
BTW, any worker can become capitalist. There is no law that says if you are born poor you must die poor. This is not 1300s England.
People stay poor because of their inability to understand the system, or simply they stay poor by choice.
Who says that the working class has to move up to the 1%? The education system is designed to produce workers, managers, and future leaders. Only a small percentage of people born in the working-class families can improve their socio-economic status. Why? Because of the IQ distribution. You have heard of scholarships, haven't you? Score perfect on SATs and you are guaranteed free education in the US.
The system works well with nature. IQ distributions are natural. So is the system. Is it cruel? Sure, so is nature.