# Why was Marx wrong about capitalism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [May 1, 2022, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-marx-wrong-about-capitalism/963744 "2022-05-01T00:27:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 60
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-marx-wrong-about-capitalism/963744/60 "2022-05-01T03:58:41Z")
> [@TedBaiamonte](#): > > If you doubt it for a second try starting business and offer sub standard pay. Ok. The following link takes you to a story of my father & stepmothers business, Market Distribution Specialists. > [@The family business: Market Distribution Specialists, Inc (1984-2012)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-family-business-market-distribution-specialists-inc-1984-2012/923289): > > It wasn’t until the plane hit cruising altitude that Teri realized she was having problems. Earlier in the morning, everything was fine, delightful even. She and her husband, John, had been preparing for their vacation… the first in 2+ years after arriving in Knoxville… to Hawai’i. She wasn’t looking forward to the three-hour layover @ LAX, but that was air travel and things seemed back to a new normal a few years after 9/11. She was in a good mood… unusually so, her husband remarked in his cus… The best paying jobs were the ones held by the owners. They would get 65 cents per book in revenue, pay someone on the street 12 cents, collect 6 cents per book in profits on _top_ of the cars, on _top_ of the trips, on _top_ of the _ **subsidized** _ freebies like corporate gas, corporate apartments, corporate trips, corporate weddings (mine, my sisters’), six-figure salaries, more. And the people doing the work? For 12 cents a book, they got to deliver a 2 pound hunk of recycled paper, and for $60 in total, they get to deliver 500 of them. Use their car, their labor, their time, to earn themselves 12 cents a book and my parents 12 cents per book when all was said and done. $.12/book doesn’t sound like much, true, but we did this _sixty million_ times in 2006, our peak. We offered substandard pay… _exploitative_ pay… and made $7.2 million in 2006 profits + benefits + salaries by being the industry leader in being exploitative. _That_ is what capitalism is about. _Margins_. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-marx-wrong-about-capitalism/963744)._