yes, this is true. no, this isn't why wages haven't kept up with productivity growth or why you must work 40 hours to sustain yourself. you have to work because profit earned must increase and paying you even one iota more than you need to be able to show up to work again tomorrow is a loss of profit. if they could make you work 80 hours a week or 160, they would in heartbeat.
thankfully, this is outlawed because labor movements of the past fought to enshrine in law a limit on how much you can be forced to work and set a minimum bar for how much they can pay you. these laws are under fire - I explore why in the rest of this reply - and will be repealed eventually if labor does not resist collectively.
however, the rate of profit always decreases on a long enough timescale because of dead labor (technology, machines, etc), inter-capitalist competition - capitalists will steal profit from each other if there's more to be had - and because infinite growth is impossible so eventually externalities will always overcome the creation of new capital.
consequently, capital accumulates in the hands of the capital-owning class - an ever-shrinking group of them, at that - and this continues until you, the worker, make so little that you cannot actually show up to work the next day - the loss of social reproduction. reproduction here doesn't only refer to progeny but also feeding, clothing, housing, etc. yourself and your family, the meeting of the basic necessities that allow you to continue working, including your health - physical and mental. capital eternally strives to reduce what it must subsidize on your behalf as ensuring you can take better care of yourself reduces profits. a capitalist that makes more profit outcompetes and drives out of business all others who choose to make less profit, eventually.
this is also why capitalism has cyclical recessions, a fact predicted in the 1870s and termed crises of capitalism, when capital has accumulated in too few hands, profit can no longer be made, and workers struggle to feed themselves. you're just noticing Marx's second law - the law of capital accumulation.
you should read how the republicans plan to avoid congress in order to accomplish their aims the next time they seize the white house. and also how fast the dems are moving right on trans issues.
it’s not about right or wrong – it’s about power. the Republicans understand that and the Democrats are doing their best to hide that fact from their constituents. you’re not going to convince anyone on the right with moral arguments.
it’s just further evidence that the rot in the economy is reaching a critical point. either some socdems push through reforms so the system can limp on or we’ll hit the 3 days of missed meals tipping point.
