I work at a consulting firm, so the firm pays me one amount while billing clients a different amount for the privilege of using me as a resource. I started two months ago at $23/hr, which is just above a living wage in the area. It'll take few months to save enough to rent my own 1br apartment, for example. It's normal for a firm to charge clients way more for my time than what I cost the firm; I expected the clients to pay maybe $65 or $75 per hour for me.
Well, my rate was finally made official today …. at $150/hr.
I'm still in the probationary/introductory period, so I'm not going to make a fuss… yet. But you can bet that I'm marking my calendar to sit down with my boss and ask for a raise. Obviously my work adds so much value that the firm is charging clients more than six times what I'm getting before deductions.
Talk about capitalism being theft from the worker. It's all just arbitrary numbers for corporate entities that treat this stuff like monopoly money.