> Your scheme of society (government) deciding everyone's wages. I'm not (necessarily) suggesting that the government decide everyone's wages. Leaving it to th

> Your scheme of society (government) deciding everyone's wages. I'm not (necessarily) suggesting that the government decide everyone's wages. Leaving it to the market is just another way for society to determine wages. > you appear to subscribe to the Labor Theory of Value, where someone's effort and time determine their wage That's not what the LToV says. To start, a wage is a price, and Marxists draw a distinction between price and value. But that's also not even the point I was trying to make. My point was: "one keeps what they earn" is a truism under any system, if "what they earn" is taken to mean "what they're paid". If, instead, "what they earn" is taken to mean "the price of what they produce", then that's obviously false under capitalism wherein companies make profits, so I assume that was not your intended meaning.