In a functioning labor market with empowered workers, all wages would rise to reflect the skill/scarcity gap between minimum wage work and skilled work.
In that case, how do you explain the last 40+ years, where productivity has been skyrocketing, but most peoples purchasing power has remained mostly flat?
Or is it your contention that there is nothing we can do that can increase the purchasing power of regular people under the current system? Because if that's the case, that would be a pretty massive indictment of the system as a whole.
Most people’s effective purchasing power have skyrocketed.
e.g. A single solar panel 40 years ago would have been more than a years‘s income for the median American. (And much less efficient too)
Even the crappiest healthcare plans nowadays offers options beyond what the absolute top of the line healthcare plans offered 40 years ago.
And btw eggs are also roughly the same or even cheaper for the median American income compared to over 40 years ago.
Everything I’ve seen suggests otherwise, a big net positive even after factoring in everything.
This is incredibly common knowledge. It's very widely reported. Just Google "real wages vs productivity graphs".