That is only true if salaries make up a significant amount of production.
My favorite example was a job at a cookie factory. A hall full of giant machines, multiple production lines. Mine, counting 5 humans produced FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND boxes of cookies per day that cost 99 cent in the store. In a 5 hour shift I earned 35 euro.
5 X 35 = 175
500000/175 = 2857 euro for each 1 euro worth of salaries
IOW salaries make up 0.035% of what customers pay.
Would the cashier or the truck driver be earning 100 k per day? The 30 ish people in the office? Would they get 100k for "running" multiple production lines?
It is frankly insulting we pay people to talk economic rubbish like that. The giant building, the ovens & production lines, the trucks and the ingredients must be handed down by the gods for free?
In my current job I clean trains for ohh something between 5000 and 20 000 people per day. Assuming a 20 k day each traveler pays me 0.0075 euro while a ticket costs [say] 50 on average. THREE out of TWENTY THOUSAND pay for my labor.
They need multiple people to clean and drive the train of course. It quickly adds up to.... nowhere near a million euro.
Building a train, train stations and laying track involves a lot of people but it isn't that (to put it scientifically) the workers are pulling the rails out of their ass or are hammering out the components on an anvil. It involves a ton of equipment.
So they put down tracks 50 years ago using machines build 60 years ago in factories build 70 years ago using tools made 80 years ago in factories build 120 years ago. etc
Lots of labor, it took very few economists. They sit in the train, eating cookies, complaining about how expensive the ticket is. One says it must be labor, they are still talking about this to this very day and will continue to do so until the end of time.
