Flippanarchy

Op's post is a very simplified rendering of Marx's Labor Theory Of Value. Marx says that the value of a commodity isn't just determined by the labor time it took to make, but rather the socially necessary labor time.

In short, the average amount of time that a society uses to make a given commodity. So of you, as an individual, were really slow at the widget factory, your widgets don't get more expensive just because it took you longer. You just get fired for being lazy.

Instead, value is determined by this Socially Necessary average, and that average is augmented by technological advancements in production. By extension, Marx says, those technological advancements in turn influence the way production, and therefore society itself, is organized;

slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity.

The reason people lack access to the necessities of life is because they labor for, say, 8 hours a day, and only recieve a fraction of the value they produce by their labor, in wages. The solution isn't necessarily to give those workers all the money, though pay raises are often a good thing, but to take the surplus value that would have previously been hoarded by a capitalist, and have its use be put towards the betterment of society, and be democratically decided upon in some way.