Riches and the riddle of poverty

May 26, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- Imagine a bakery owned by Sam. Every day, Sam employs Joe to bake bread. Joe works 8 hours a day and is paid $100.

Now, let’s look at the business side of things. In one day, Joe uses flour, yeast, water, electricity, packaging, etc.. Let’s say that all these materials and utilities cost $50. Then there is rent, maintenance, equipment wear, admin, etc. (overheads). Let’s say that’s another $50.

So, the total daily cost to Sam is Joe’s wages of $100; ingredients and materials: $50; and overheads of another $50. This totals $200

Now, Joe bakes enough bread that Sam sells for $500 in total that day. So the total income (from selling bread) is $500. The total cost of production (all-inclusive) is $200. This leaves a profit (surplus) of $300.

This $300 is what Karl Marx called surplus value. It’s what remains after all the costs are paid, including Joe’s wage. But here’s the key point: That $300 of profit only exists because Joe produced more value during his workday than he was paid for.

Joe’s labour created the value of the bread, and though he was paid a fair market wage, the value of what he produced exceeded that wage. That excess value was taken by Sam, not because Sam worked harder, but because Sam owns the bakery. This is the core of Marx’s idea: that workers generate more value than they are paid, and that extra value is taken as profit by those who own the business. In other words, under capitalism, profit is unpaid labour.

Now, Joe doesn’t own the bakery. That’s Sam’s name on the sign. Sam is a decent fellow, often seen inspecting crusts or shaking hands with suppliers. Sam pays for the flour, the salt, the yeast. He pays the rent and keeps the lights on. All told, it costs Sam about $200 a day to keep things running—including Joe’s wage.

To repeat for emphasis: The bread Joe bakes sells for $500. And the extra $300? That doesn’t go back to Joe. That’s Sam’s. It’s what’s left after the bills are paid. Sam calls it profit. Karl Marx called it surplus value. I call it the answer to why some are rich and some are not. And why poverty is not simply a lack of opportunity or initiative, but is also structural.

The story we often tell, or are told, is that with enough effort and hustle, Joe, too, could own a bakery. We call it the “opportunity myth.” But the ladder we offer Joe is made of rickety wood.

Joe can’t buy the oven. He can’t afford to close the gap between today’s rent and next week’s paycheck. He has a daughter. She needs shoes. He has a tooth that aches when it rains. And he bakes the bread.

Meanwhile, Sam opens a second bakery. He buys new ovens, hires more Joes. Each one paid enough to stay, but not enough to rise. The profits stack like loaves at closing time.

This isn’t to say Sam is wicked or that ambition is a sin. It is only to say that the world isn’t quite as even as we pretend. Wealth isn’t always born of brilliance. It is often the fruit of ownership, not labour. The man who kneads the dough makes less than the man who owns the oven.

Opportunity, in theory, is a lovely thing. But in practice, it’s often a door without a doorknob. We hold it up like a lantern, but we forget who is allowed through and who is left squinting in the dark.

If we want to understand poverty, we must stop treating it as a failure of effort. And if we want to talk honestly about wealth, we must admit that it rides on the back of someone else’s work. Joe bakes. Sam profits. That’s the math. But the capitalist elites do not wish to admit that their wealth was created on the back of appropriating surplus value, which they did not create.

The capitalist elites prefer stories of genius and grit, of risk-taking investments and innovation. They speak of job creation as if it were a selfless public service, rather than the means by which they multiply their earnings. In modern mythology, the boss is the builder, the labourer is the burden. And so long as that myth holds, the system is preserved: the workers toil, the owners accumulate, and inequality deepens.

We teach children that success is a staircase and that each step reflects a choice or a talent. But we rarely show them the elevator in the back, the one only a few are handed keys to. We don’t speak of inherited capital, of tax loopholes, or the quiet machinery of exploitation that turns human labour into private luxury.

Instead, we scold the poor for their circumstances and celebrate the rich for their extraction. If a man who bakes can’t afford his own bread, it’s not a tragedy of laziness—it’s a failure of justice. Poverty is not the absence of ambition. It is the presence of a structure that takes more than it gives back, and then tells you the deficit is your fault. Until we reckon with that, no talk about lifting people out of poverty in six months will bridge the chasm between those who work and those who profit from their work.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

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