[tprice7]

"the value of what they produce, there would be no profit, no payoff for investors / owners"

It depends if "the value of what they produce" means marginal output or average output. Due to the law of diminishing returns, typically average output is greater than marginal output. The theory predicts that wages = marginal output: if wages are less, you can increase profits by hiring more workers, if they are more, you can increase profits by laying people off. So it comes to an equilibrium where the marginal output matches market wages. Since this is less than average output, it is still possible to make a profit.

I agree though that the article is being misleading here since "the value of what they produce" is an ambiguous term that should probably refer to average output rather than marginal output.