this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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All of what you said could be true, and still this pic would be dumb.
Even if there are no corporations, basically every product is done thanks to the effort of multiple people. If 20 people build a house together, they can't sell that house and each of them buy a similar house with that money. That's just not how reality works.
Except that people who spend 8 or more hours a day, five or more days a week, making thousands of loaves of bread for corporations to profit off of, are barely scraping by, hardly able to afford the necessities, and in many cases making tough decisions on what essentials to do without, while corporations rake in record profits which go straight to the shareholders and C-suite, who contribute next to nothing to the process of production.
If that seems totally fine and normal to you, then I can't help you.
Bakers can have excellent well paid union jobs with a good pension, at big corporations. Not all do but that's a different issue.
Keyword "can." Not everywhere is unionized
That's not what this post is about. Someone that spends 8 hours a day five days a week in any 1st world country can afford plenty of leaves of bread. Doesn't matter if they're a baker, a cashier, an engineer, or a metalworker.
The reason you can't bake a single loaf and buy another is not because the CEO ate your loaf. The reason is because you had to buy an oven, ingredients, and the energy to turn that oven on.
You could argue how little executives contribute to society. My argument is that even if there were no executives, you wouldn't be free according to this pic. Not even in a communist or anarchist society.
As long as there is the labor of more than one person involved at all in producing anything, selling that product will not earn you enough to buy it back since you have to give part of that to the other people that put in their labor for that product.
I am honestly in awe that there are so many people that can't comprehend this.
Maybe if the only essential recurring expense is bread. In reality, at a bare minimum, people also need to afford rent, utilities, healthcare, transportation to and from work, and food with enough variety to provide full, balanced nutrition. Suddenly the bread budget looks much smaller.
Thanks for admitting you've never actually looked into the numbers concerning social stratification and wealth disparity.
That would only apply if you're selling the product at cost, in which case the necessities you need to buy on a regular basis would also be more affordable. The reality in the current system is that products are sold for a huge markup, making most of the essentials less affordable for the people doing the productive labor, while the profits from those markups go straight to the top.
Then you might want to check your own comprehension, because there are layers of subtext that are going straight over your head.
For further reading, see "the alienation of labor," and "the appropriation of the surplus value of labor."
You'd have to be nearly functionally illiterate to be unable to recognize how those concepts manifest in modern society.
Then you're making a way different argument than what the post is making.
The post says that a baker that bakes a loaf should be able to afford a loaf.
You're now saying that whoever works X hours should be able to buy Y things. This is very different.
First of all, not all hours of labor are worth the same. And if you believe that, you're delusional. In my opinion, a farmer that grows food for 8 hours a day should be able to afford more bread than someone that spends 8 hours a day digging a hole and filling it back up again.
And a farmer that is hardworking and manages to produce 10 kg of grain per hour should be able to afford more than a lazy one producing 0.5kg per hour.
All 3 of those did 8 hours of labor.
The reason your argument is way off the post is that the post is very clear what the labor is (baking 1 loaf). And what the compensation is expected (1 loaf).
You are neither clear about the labor (8h 5 days of unknown kind of labor), nor about the expected compensation (rent, utilities, healthcare, transport, balanced nutrition).
I can agree that all real jobs if done with an acceptable performance for 40h/week should be able to afford all that + more if those expenses are reasonable (a mansion rent and 1bedroom apartment rent are both rent). But how much is "more"?
But that is neither the point of this post, nor the point of the argument.
You apparently can't read subtext. It's a fucking meme and you're trying to take it literally, missing the point entirely. It's clearly about drawing attention to the alienation of labor, wage stagnation, and the cost of living crisis. If you're incapable of picking up on that then you must be extremely privileged and sheltered.
The people who maintain your roads and water lines would like a word.
A couple fallacies here. 1) that's not how grain production works. It takes days of labor over an extended period (weeks and months) to produce a harvest. It's not a "kg of grain per hour" scenario.
harvest output does not directly corelate with "working hard." Weather plays a role. Some seasons have better harvests than others. Some people own a few acres, some own hundreds of hectares. It's not "farmer who only produces .5kg is lazy."
the people who own the land, in most cases, are not the ones doing the farming. The people doing the labor are often compensated the least. So your "hard work" fallacy is extremely flawed.
You have to be extremely out of touch in order to think like that. Were you born into wealth or something?
People who are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to make ends meet aren't worried about living in mansions. In some places, the shittiest studio apartments in the most run-down neighborhoods already cost $1000 a month or more. And if you're a family of four, you're gonna need something bigger than that.
I don't think you are arguing in good faith. And you're trying to derail this conversation in 20 different directions so I'm going to ignore 90% of your comment.
The reason the "subtext" is irrelevant is because there's no reason for it.
It's like making a post saying "all cats should be provided by restaurant-level handcrafted meals paid by the government". Then I comment "that is stupid and unsustainable". Then you come here saying "it's not stupid, every MINUTE there are cats dying of hunger all around the world! The post is not about restaurant-level meals! It's about feeding the poor unfortunate kitten that have been abandoned! Are you a soulless cat-hating human?"
And digging a hole just to fill it back again does not fix any pipes :) it just makes the soil a little bit looser.
I think you're the one not arguing in good faith. Projection, much?
In this context, the "bread" is a symbol, being used to comment on a much broader range of social phenomena, just like political cartoons have always done since they were first invented.
Everyone else here seems to pick up on that, because they live through the reality every day of being overworked and underpaid while the cost of living goes further and further out of reach. The fact that you don't get it just tells everyone how glaringly out of touch you are with the plight of ordinary everyday people.
And your inane comparison to cats in restaurants is nothing more than a strawman, not worth even taking seriously.
Nobody is getting paid to dig a hole and fill it in without a reason, so your imaginary scenarios aren't going to convince anyone that the average worker is already getting paid enough, or that if anyone is poor they probably deserve it because their job is pointless or they don't work hard, or whatever point you're trying to make.
I have argued why I don't believe you're arguing in good faith. And your response to that is saying that I don't either.
You haven't either said why my argument is wrong nor why I am arguing in bad faith.
You just keep ignoring my points and accusing me of things without any argument behind the accusations.
So until you provide any argument for your accusations and start responding to my arguments. I will refuse to argue with you.