High ‘Earners’

 Last month there was a lot of fuss about the non-dom status of Akshata Murthy, wife of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak. This meant she did not pay tax in the UK on her income from elsewhere (she is the daughter of a big Indian IT boss and is said to be richer than the queen).

Socialists do not take sides on how the capitalists divide up the payment of taxes among themselves, but one aspect of this whole discussion was well worthy of comment. Many reports referred to Murthy’s earnings. But her income, from dividends and profits, was certainly not earned by her.

Workers earn when they sell their labour power for a wage, whether it is in the factory, office, shop, call centre, school, hospital, building site or what have you. They have to work for an employer, enabling whoever employs them to make a profit.

In contrast is unearned income, which is ‘income not acquired through work. Examples of unearned income, also known as passive income, include interest from savings accounts, bond interest, alimony, and dividends from stocks’ (Investopedia). The dividends, and presumably various forms of interest too, constitute Murthy’s income, which is certainly not earned in the ways that the wages or salaries of the vast majority of people are earned.

So when you read about the supposed ‘earnings’ of the super-rich, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, think a little about what that means. They do not get their vast wealth from their own labour and do not earn it: they become rich through exploiting the rest of us. ‘Unearned income’ is in their case a euphemism for exploitation.

PB