MPCooper

There is a growing disconnect between work and wealth—between the people who build companies and the people who profit from them.

Imagine two people starting a company with a million dollars. One person earned that money themselves and invested it to build a business. The other inherited a million dollars from their parents and used that money to start a company.

In theory, we might expect these companies to look very different. We might assume that the person who had to work for their money would have more empathy for employees. Maybe they would be more willing to share success with the people helping them build the company.

But in modern business, that difference often disappears. In practice, many companies end up functioning the same way regardless of how the owner got their start.

And that reveals a deeper problem in how our economy treats work and the people who perform it.

The Incentive to Cut Labor

Starting a company is expensive. That initial million dollars disappears quickly.

You have to pay for equipment.
You have to pay for rent.
You have to pay for production.
You have to pay for workers.

None of those things are cheap.

Now imagine the business succeeds. After the first year, the company pays off its debts and breaks even. The following year, the owner knows the business will generate $1 million in revenue and $500,000 in operating costs.

That leaves $500,000 in profit.

If the owner didn’t include their own salary in those costs, that half-million dollars becomes their potential personal income before taxes.

From the owner’s perspective, the goal is obvious: recover their initial investment as quickly as possible and keep as much profit as they can. That’s the incentive structure most businesses operate under.

But here’s the problem.

Most costs in a business are fixed.

You can’t bargain down the cost of a machine very easily. If it costs $50,000, you pay $50,000.
You can’t negotiate rent forever if the lease is $20,000 a month.
You can’t magically make raw materials cheaper.

The easiest expense to cut—the most flexible one—is labor.

Wages.

The Worker’s Weak Position

If a business owner wants to increase profits, the simplest way to do it is often to pay employees less or reduce the number of employees.

Now, a good employer might choose not to do that. They might share profits. They might pay fair wages because they believe their workers deserve it.

But our economic system does not reward that behavior. In fact, it often punishes it.

Businesses compete with one another, and lowering labor costs is one of the easiest ways to stay competitive.

Meanwhile, the average worker is simply trying to live.

They’re trying to pay rent or a mortgage.
They’re trying to raise children.
They’re trying to afford healthcare and basic stability.

And if the employer refuses to pay enough to support that life, the worker often has very little leverage—especially if jobs are scarce or the company dominates the local economy.

If your only option is to accept the wage offered or have no job at all, that isn’t really a free choice.

It’s survival.

Why Employers Fear Unions

This imbalance of power is also why employers so often resist unions.

A union changes the basic dynamic between employer and employee. It gives workers leverage.

Without a union, each employee negotiates alone. In theory, individuals can negotiate for higher pay or better conditions. In practice, that leverage is very limited. If one worker demands too much, the company can simply replace them.

An individual worker is replaceable.

But an entire workforce is not so easily replaced.

When workers organize together, they gain the ability to negotiate collectively. They can demand better wages, better working conditions, and a fairer share of the value they help create. That collective power forces employers to take workers seriously in a way that individual negotiations rarely do.

This is precisely why many companies fight unions so aggressively. It’s not just about union dues or workplace rules. It’s about power.

Unions shift some of that power away from ownership and toward labor.

Of course, unions are not perfect institutions. Like any organization, they can overreach, become bureaucratic, or fail to represent workers effectively. Those risks are real.

But without unions—or some form of collective bargaining—workers often have almost no leverage at all.

Without that leverage, the relationship between employer and employee can begin to resemble something closer to economic serfdom: workers dependent on a company for survival but with little ability to influence how they are treated.

Unions exist because the imbalance of power between employer and worker is real. They are one of the few tools workers have to correct it.

The Myth of the Self-Made Success

Conservative economic thinking often centers on the idea that the business owner deserves whatever wealth they accumulate.

After all, they started the company.
They took the risk.
They made it happen.

But this argument ignores something fundamental.

No business succeeds alone.

No owner builds the products themselves.
No owner manages every task alone.
No owner runs the entire operation without workers.

Employees create the value that allows a company to grow.

Yet we are quick to credit the leader and just as quick to sideline the people who actually helped build the success.

This happens because of a very human bias. Everyone likes to believe they earned their success entirely on their own. And when things go wrong, it’s easy to blame someone else.

But deep down we all know that success—especially economic success—is never a solo achievement.

The Responsibility of Success

If nobody truly succeeds alone, then success creates responsibility.

The people who benefit the most from the system—the owners, executives, and major investors—also have the greatest obligation to the society that made their success possible.

That obligation exists for two reasons.

First, their workers helped create that wealth.

Second, society itself makes wealth possible. Infrastructure, education systems, legal protections, financial markets, and public stability all contribute to the environment where businesses thrive.

Without those things, wealth accumulation at scale would be impossible.

Yet many wealthy individuals resist contributing back through taxes or social programs. They view any redistribution as an unfair punishment for their success.

But that perspective ignores the reality that their success depended on the very systems they now resist supporting.

The Role of Government

Holding individuals morally accountable for these responsibilities is difficult. People rarely volunteer to give up money once they have it.

That’s where policy comes in.

Government can rebalance the system through taxation and regulation—not to punish success, but to ensure that the benefits of economic growth are shared more broadly.

That could mean policies like: stronger worker protections, ending at-will employment structures that leave workers vulnerable, limiting executive compensation structures that reward short-term profit extraction, and tax systems that capture a fair share of corporate profits

Consumption taxes like a Value Added Tax (VAT), for example, can distribute tax burdens differently than traditional income taxes while still ensuring corporations contribute to the public systems they rely on.

These policies aren’t about taking success away from anyone.

They are about recognizing that prosperity is collective.

Wealth Doesn’t Make You Special

Earning wealth does not make someone morally superior.

It makes them rich.

That distinction matters.

Wealth does not grant someone greater worth as a human being. It does not mean they deserve greater dignity than the people who helped them succeed.

Every person deserves a dignified life.

Every person deserves stability, opportunity, and basic security.

And when a society allows some people to accumulate enormous wealth while the workers who built that wealth struggle to survive, something has gone wrong.

Rethinking Power in the Workplace

If you are struggling financially while working full time, it is worth asking an uncomfortable question.

Are the people who employ you truly earning the right to treat you the way they do?

If your labor creates value but you receive only a fraction of the reward, then the system itself may be failing you.

Recognizing that imbalance is the first step toward changing it.

Because the disconnect between work and wealth isn’t inevitable.

It’s the result of choices—economic choices, political choices, and cultural choices.

And societies can choose differently.