Wage Slavery

Wage slavery as a concept can be a general criticism of capitalism, defined as a condition in which a capitalist class (a minority of the population) controls all of the necessary non-human components of production (capital, land, industry, etc.) that workers use to produce goods.

Wage slavery also refers to a class condition resting primarily on:

• the existence of property not intended for active use,
• the concentration of ownership in few hands,
• the lack of direct access by workers to the means of production and consumption goods
• the perpetuation of a reserve army of unemployed workers.

and secondarily on:

• the waste of workers' efforts and resources on producing useless luxuries;
• the waste of goods so that their price may remain high; and
• the waste of all those who sit between the producer and consumer, taking their own shares at each stage without actually contributing to the production of goods.

Though stock ownership remains highly concentrated in capitalist societies, some workers complement their wage earnings with stock market investments. This can create a conflict of interest when stock profits require outsourcing of jobs or lowering of wages and other benefits.

Wage laborers and their families incur debt from financial institutions to compensate for insufficient earnings. According to economist Steve Keen, the "deleveraging" moments when they (or the governments they live under) pay down debt instead of spending on consumption or investment in real-economy infrastructure, result in economic crises or even depressions (such as The Great Depression). The lack of aggregate demand caused by low wages and low unionization, as well as the higher wages that create inflation--as capitalists pass increased labor costs onto consumers-- are important factors in the the creation of the business cycle.

Via Wikipedia
Thanks to HiLobrow