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Economists have developed a way to put a price tag on how much this costs workers. In 2018, the median annual compensation was $30,500. In a paper published that year, researchers estimated that in a perfectly competitive market, it would be closer to $41,000 and could be as high as $92,000. These are numbers to pause over: incomes rising by at least a third, just from making markets fair. But as big corporations have gotten bigger, buying up competitors or putting them out of business, workers have fewer and fewer options. Many are vastly underpaid and don’t even realize it. Do you know who does? The bosses and investors.[33]
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