Maybe occasional shocks to the labour market would be a good policy going forwards. It seems a lot of people have suddenly found much better jobs just by being forced to look...
This is exacerbated by the fact that it's very hard to fire people and that most developers work for relatively large and stable companies that rarely go out of business. Both of these factors are pleasant for the workers (including myself), of course, but they can have a negative or stabilising effect on salaries. Regular shocks which would cause poorly run companies to go bankrupt without changing the aggregate demand for developers would help push developer salaries upwards.
My view is that competent developers can rise to the level of income they deserve, without sweating it too much that others with more experience are somehow keeping them back.
The gist of it seems to be the age old “problem” that older people are conservative and want stability while younger people want new things and to their own place in the world. It used to be solved naturally by older people dying and freeing up space, but recently society started progressing so much faster than before that people are not dying fast enough to “keep up” with the progress by taking their old and obsolete things, viewpoints and habits to the grave.
Im all for adequate safety nets. I like UBIs personally and the response to the pandemic (on both sides of the pond) isn't far off of that.