If you're happy with what you're getting, are you being exploited?

Personally: I've reached the point where I don't want to know what my colleagues make. I know many of them make significantly more, but that's fine. In some cases I'm outright happy for them.

Exploitation is a tax that your boss (and their boss) is hiding from you. Literally just taking right out of your pocket before you ever even see it, just like a gangster would do.

“If you're happy with what you're getting, are you being exploited?”

Yes you are exploited if you don’t know what would be possible.

No, just that a sense of happiness is a relative measure. Do you think you'd be happier earning 50K when everyone else is earning 25K, or 100K where everyone else is earning 200K? Everyone believes he is the latter, but in reality, over time, the former group people probably are happier, I wager.

It’s not really about the dollar amounts. It’s the fact that my employer is using an information asymmetry to arbitrage my labor.

Here’s an analogy. Say I wait tables at a restaurant. If I discover my boss has been skimming off my tips, I’m going to be upset — even if I was perfectly happy with my pay before I learned that.

Not comparable. That's outright wage theft, not informational asymmetry.

What do you think wage theft is? If you’re getting paid half as much as someone else doing the same job, I’d call that “outright wage theft” too.

That's a negotiation you were disadvantaged in: not something you can literally be sued for in court, and possibly even face criminal charges for.

That's not really germane to the discussion though. The only reason you can be sued or charged for skimming tips is that we decided to make a law against it. It has nothing to do with whether they're comparable in a moral sense.