It's a bit more complex, but even avoiding how much value pleople get from paying their rent, only as much was transferred as there would be empty vacancies from people relocating elsewhere (or losing their homes and having nowhere to go). If elsewhere, they also pay rent to somebody. Plus somebody else would pay the rent when they are gone, just slightly lower (probably). That difference in rent price would be amount being transferred then.
Long story short it's more likely that they were able to buy other necessities and more food than they could without a job.
Your argument would work though if these were high paying jobs - that would likely only result in fewer luxuries being bought.
If money ends up in the hands of employees, then statistically by definition most of them are not the 1% and money equals higher level of living instead of more useless stuff.
I think the idea isn’t that it was a net transfer from individual working-class people to the capital class, but rather a net transfer from city/state/country treasuries to the capital class.
How much of that translates to the rich getting richer, depends on what proportion of those treasuries’ funds originally came from taxes on the rich, vs. taxes on everyone else.
The way I see it, they state money belongs to everyone (bear with me), the transfer between working and capital class happens when it is not distributed evenly, which is what happened at booking.com and is happening quite often because those who work don't have time to research new regulations, don't have experts to analyze them and some yet other people to fill out necessary documents to get money from the state.
That's why I believe many laws like "let's help THOSE people in need" end up on a giant pile that's mostly getting abused by those who have time for it (of course there are exceptions).
Long story short it's more likely that they were able to buy other necessities and more food than they could without a job.
Your argument would work though if these were high paying jobs - that would likely only result in fewer luxuries being bought.
If money ends up in the hands of employees, then statistically by definition most of them are not the 1% and money equals higher level of living instead of more useless stuff.