How's it nonsense? If I buy $499 dollars at face-value and sell them for $500 there's no possible justification for the claim that I created $500 of value. Perh

How's it nonsense? If I buy $499 dollars at face-value and sell them for $500 there's no possible justification for the claim that I created $500 of value. Perhaps I created $1. Paying for labor is absolutely as transactional as paying for other inputs to your business. Because you (hopefully) create marginal value on top of that comp doesn't mean the total comp is your value creation. You can't just add total employee comp to your "value created" pile. There's maybe some marginal value creation you could kind-of claim in that your presence increased employee comp over some hypothetical world where you didn't exist—but that's getting well into bullshit territory, since there's no way to know some competitor you crushed wouldn't have ended up creating more total value and paying their employees even more. It's pure fantasy.