I've gotten a lot of little tidbits from my boss that are interesting, but I just learned something that blows all that out of the water and reframes everything.
The store I work in, a convenience store/pharmacy of medium size in a spot somewhere between the suburbs and the city, pays $50k a month in rent.
Think about how much more you're charged for products than they cost to produce. Set aside the actual Capitalists in the process, they at least facilitate production. Think about how much extra money you've been spending just so that retailers can meet the demands of some company that has a piece of paper that says they own the land.
Apparently in big cities, the rent can get over $200k a month.
Rents are twofold in some instances. There was a company I worked for that paid something like $50,000/month in rent to another LLC owned by the same owner. So whenever raises were discussed, rent would increase and the profits would suddenly "disappear"
Also allows companies to shift money around between LLCs and evade different taxes.