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I'm not sure what we're struggling with here.

If you get paid a salary, that salary is calculated to ensure that someone else makes money from your work.

That doesn't imply a zero-sum game. It implies that we live within a system which encourages (or necessitates) exploitation at almost every level.

So to bring it back around to the actual point: To say that someone "earns" something suggests that they gain it deservedly. To me that seems to ignore the realities of how they got to be in such a privileged position, and suggests that the person at the bottom equally deserves to be there.

You don't have to agree and I'll happily be proven wrong, but don't put words in my mouth.

I think you are going to have to show your working on this one, as it sounds a lot like prejudice with no basis. As you say, happy to change that position when you provide some evidence.

Lets use, as a working example, a post-grad course lecturer.

He or she works for a University and earns £50,000/year.

I'd suggest that he or she "earns" their money by lecturing, marking, etc etc.

Whether that's deserved or not would be measurable by their performance - how many students give the course a good rating, pass their exams etc.

The realities of how the lecturer gained their position would probably number amongst them a course of study, passing exams, writing a thesis etc etc.

In your version of the world, which does sound rather a lot like a zero sum game, they've also ground the faces of the poor into the dirt and taken money (almost) directly from their pockets.

My question is how?