Why is working for money considered wage slavery?

To understand this concept, you really have to understand where we are now, where we came from, and how we got here.

Just a few generations ago, life was very different. Globally, most people lived a far more rural life than most of us do now. People didn't go out to work, they worked to provide for themselves and their families. Your quality of life and ease of life was directly related to the sweat on your brow, not on the money you had in your bank account. Today, largely, the people who do the most work earn the smallest wages, and those earning the really big bucks haven't done a day's graft in their lives.

We grew our own food, preserved it, stored it, and lived off it. We largely made our own clothes, built the machinery and labour saving devices we needed ourselves, tailored exactly to our own specifications, and they were built to last. If they did break down, as all things do, we repaired them ourselves because we could. We built our own homes, and each was unique, reflecting our needs, our abilities, and our personal tastes and flair.

That's not to say there was no need of money, but money was largely for luxuries, smart clothes for church and the like.

There is no need for money, but this society accepts it as a means to everything. Google Michael Reynolds and his earthships. It is entirely possible, and indeed more cost effective, to build a house that essentially plugs in to nature, and as a result of that encounter with the surrounding environment, it generates it's own power, it regulates and stores temperature so that it needs no heating, even in the winter. It collects rainwater, filters and cleans it, and even handles it's own sewage in a way that boosts the immediate environment, surrounding the house with an oasis of green. It is entirely possible to build our homes in a way that requires no external infrastructure, no utility bills, no pollution-billowing power stations, no buzzing electricity lines, a house that provides all of your needs just because of how it is built, using intellect and an understanding of how natural processes work.

So why then instead do we live in cardboard boxes that require constant streams of money to keep them from turning into death traps?

We've been deluded by the idea of convenience, but a life of convenience is a costly one, and in more than just money cost. The satisfaction of making something yourself that then makes your life easier is replaced by the quickly evaporating dopamine response we get from buying a new thing. The reason why so many people are dissatisfied with their lives is because everything is done for them, they just have to pick it up off a shelf.

It happened slowly, a generation at a time, but we were shifted from people who could fend for ourselves by the sweat of our brows, to helpless whelps who wouldn't know what to do without supermarkets full of food, electrically powered toothbrushes and food made by machines that's better travelled than I am. That's the true nature of our slavery. We are slaves because we have been robbed of the knowledge of how to provide for ourselves, ourselves. We are reliant on money because it has been made the only way of getting everything we need to survive. Even your own experience and knowledge isn't enough for many places, you need a standardised, state approved education and qualification. Your own opinion carries no weight unless it agrees with what has already been decided is correct.