Cost Living and Actually Living

According to Marx wage is money paid for Labor power. Wages pay us for our time and not the actual value we add to the product we produce with our time. The minimum wage is determined by calculating the cost of living and reproduction. The value that we add goes to someone else so we never have enough to better ourselves and our children; we become stuck living pay check to pay check. The companies underpay us to make a profit for themselves.
In the Onion an article titled “Cost Of Living Now Outweighs Benefits” it shows that the calcualtions for the cost of living is understated and therefore it is not worth living. “The fact is, the supply of Americans greatly outstrips demand," said Evan Alvi of the Portland-based Maynard Institute. "Americans seem to believe that minting more lives will increase the value of their own holdings. All they are doing, though, is inflating the supply and reducing the dividends paid by long-term familial bonds." This supports the theory that the further the labor is divided the less you have to pay the workers because the easier the job becomes. Dividing the labor and lowing wages lowers the cost of production and allows production to increase; the higher the production the lower the wage. The easier the job becomes the less people need to be hired and this creates joblessness. Joblessness gives the capitalist a large pool of unemployed people to choose from creating competition amongst the workers, depreciating the wages. This means less money even for those of us lucky enough to have a job.
Because of this miscalculation we are forced to live a lower standard of living. In Marx it says, “He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labor as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life.” Seeing this proof that the wages we are paid is lower than the cost of living definitely connects with Marx that we are just living to work. We are not satisfied by our job, it does not fulfill all our wants. We cannot escape the capitalist class. We need the capital so we have no choice but to accept the job and the wage just to live. The capitalist need us but having so many to choose from we suffer. So is it worth living?