Capitalism typically refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production (also known as capital) are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in new technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor. However, since prior economic systems featured all these elements to some degree, capitalism might differentiate itself by the pervasiveness of wage labor in the interdependent social class context of nonlabor income derived from property not intended for the owner's (or employer's) active personal use.