Then you'd just be discriminating against the youngish, the married and a bunch of other factors. I just think these kind of answers are the first logical steps in trying to address the problem. With more thought and experience people will arrive at the realisation that there may actually not be a good mechanism to socially engineer the desired outcome.

Devolving decision making to the business owners and managers, and to individual workers is what allows the system to work. Attempts to override and legislate decisions will fail with unintended consequences and ultimately make things worse in other ways. A complete solution would require totalitarian control, at which point you may as well just have central planning.