Paid by the piece, you run faster to earn more. But when the floor's output climbs, management quietly cuts the rate — and you sprint just to stand still. Drag the rate and the effort, switch the ratchet on, and see whether working harder ever actually pays.
Piece pay = rate × units, and units = effort × 8 hours — drag the two handles and the day's pay and effective hourly wage compute exactly. Flip the ratchet on and the model does what piece-rate systems historically did: once effort rises past a baseline, the paid rate is cut in proportion (rate × (baseline/effort)), so pay flattens or falls even as you work harder. The arithmetic is exact; the reference line is a fixed $18/hr hourly wage for comparison.
The ratchet — cutting the rate when output rises — is a documented labour practice (Taylorism, the 'rate-busting' problem), but the exact cut rule here is a stylised model, not a law of every workplace. The piece-pay arithmetic and the hourly comparison are exact; whether a given employer ratchets is an empirical, contested question.