Interesting that you bring up the world’s most equalitarian nations/cultures where income spread between highest and lowest is relatively low, while in the US it rivals cleptocracies. Dishwashers there can make $30/hr because executives make 5x and everyone thinks that's how it should be. A highly paid dishwasher doesn't trigger inflation. In the US, where yesterday's low paid labor earned $10/hr and 2 years later is paid $30/hr, it's a huge inflationary shock to the system. Not because low paid labor is overpaid, but because the entire labor market's pay increased accordingly and no one on the upper tier of the pay scale would ever consider cutting their salary in half so that those on the lowest pay tier can earn more.
Yeah what is wrong with all those $15/hr dishwashers (unless they are in Semi-Socialist Scandinavia) can't they see how much the billionaires are suffering with this 7% inflation.
I just you just discovered an alternative way of fixing the 30/hr problem, perhaps without realizing it.
I'm not sure where you're going with this or if you have a point to make adding to or disagreeing with my perspective.
The answer to your question is not complicated. What to do about it is what's complicated. In modern, large economies, there are virtually no ideal "free markets", where buyers and sellers are equally free to walk, at both the scale and with the enlightened regulation needed for "supply and demand" to work its magic. The "invisible hand" is tied behind its master's back . Politically driven regulation destroys free markets, just as lack of regulation does. Only disinterested regulation can protect free markets. We have gotten away from that. Politics, which read as "special interests", now drives regulation. The warts and blemishes in our defective U.S. Constitution are coming to light. Those that framed the Constitution and its Amendments assumed the dominant nature of men was benign. "Men", in the original context of the Constitution, meant male property owners. These men were almost entirely white. No provision was made, nor has it since been made, that would prevent a Senate making a rule that would render itself incapable of fulfilling its Constitutional duties. And that, indeed, is what has happened. Revolutions can fix things, or make them worse. I don't know which has the higher probability, better or worse. An interesting question is, are we close to the point of accelerating failure and then revolution? I think not yet. If the nation can get to mid-century without any minority seizing power by deceit, legal or illegal, than I think the American Nation can hold together for perhaps as long as did the Roman Empire. In six years, the future should be more clearly seen than now. We are at a danger point somewhat similar to that faced by our nation on the morning of March 4, 1861, but now in a modern context where disinformation travels faster than information.