Let’s talk about the greatest scam after self-help books and overpriced gym memberships: the monthly salary.

You see, in most economic transactions, you pay for what you use. You pay for your groceries when you eat them. You pay your therapist per hour (and per emotional breakdown). You even pay your ride-share driver per trip. But not your employees. Oh no—when it comes to your labour, society decided to reverse Uno the logic and pay everyone the same amount every month, regardless of whether they solved world hunger or spent 60% of their time Googling “how to sound busy on Slack.”

It’s a fixed reward system that says: “Here’s the prize for showing up—don’t worry too much about what you do with it.” And we wonder why productivity is down.

The Reverse Incentive Olympics

Let’s run the math, shall we? You get paid the same amount whether you work like a caffeinated squirrel on a sugar high or whether you barely survive the Monday morning meeting and spend the rest of the week rotating between emails, existential dread, and pretending to look busy on Zoom.

Naturally, any semi-rational person (read: you, me, that one guy at the back who always wears noise-cancelling headphones) will do the math and come to the following conclusion: The best way to get the most out of your salary is to do the least possible without getting fired. It’s economics 101, baby: maximize reward, minimize effort.

In essence, a monthly salary turns every job into an elaborate game of “How Little Can I Do Without Getting Called Into HR?”

Subscription-Based Capitalism, But For People

Think about it: a salary is essentially your employer subscribing to you for a flat fee. And much like any subscription service, there are good months and bad months. Sometimes you’re Netflix-in-2016-levels of productive. Other times, you’re the last season of Game of Thrones—technically present, but leaving everyone vaguely disappointed.

And this system punishes over-performers. If you do the work of three people, guess what? Congrats, now you are three people. But you still only get paid like one. Meanwhile, your colleague who’s been “building a new internal dashboard” for six months (a.k.a. playing Minesweeper with pivot tables) gets the same paycheck.

Hourly Wages, But Make It Existential

Sure, some will argue: “That’s why hourly pay is fairer!” But even then, we’re just slapping a meter on the meat machine. Why should someone be paid for time at all? Shouldn’t value be based on, you know, value?

It’s like tipping a magician by the hour. “Wow, great trick! That only took 90 seconds though, so here’s $2.” Doesn’t make sense. But somehow we’ve decided that if you spend eight hours a day nodding solemnly in meetings and adding phrases like “synergize verticals” to Google Docs, you deserve a medal. Or at least a direct deposit.

The Performance-Based Fantasy

Corporate cheerleaders will now yell: “But we DO reward performance! Promotions! Bonuses!” Ah yes, the elusive bonus—the corporate unicorn. The “performance-based” incentive that’s usually decided behind closed doors based on a blend of vibes, favoritism, and how often you laughed at your manager’s jokes during quarterly reviews.

Let’s not pretend the bonus system is a meritocracy. It’s a luck-of-the-draw casino where your raise depends on whether your manager thinks you were “visible” enough this quarter. Not whether you solved critical problems or saved the company millions. (You did? Cute. Did you make the KPI dashboard look pretty, though?)

The Great Salary Mind Trick

What the salary does, above all else, is disguise work as security. It tells you, “You’re safe. You’re valued. You have a place here.” It soothes your economic anxieties long enough for you to voluntarily donate your best years, ideas, and 9-to-5 vitality to The Company™. The monthly salary is the capitalist equivalent of belly rubs—it keeps the workforce docile.

Because what would happen if people realized they were underpaid for over-delivering? Or worse, that doing more didn’t actually lead to more? That the system is built to milk the efficient and carry the complacent? You might just start asking questions. And we can’t have that.

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Conclusion: Salaries are the Participation Trophy of Capitalism

So next time someone proudly says, “I make $5,000 a month,” ask them: “Cool, but what happens if you stop working?” If their answer is “they stop paying me,” then congrats—they’ve just admitted that their time is being rented like a bad Airbnb. The goal isn’t freedom or purpose; it’s being just productive enough to avoid replacement.

Maybe it’s time we rethink salaries—not as rewards, but as retainer fees for not quitting. And if you’re being paid the same no matter what, maybe working less isn’t slacking off. Maybe it’s just smart economics.