The first premise is wrong. Let's say I invent a new product license it to other companies overseas to manufacture and sell. The idea earns me a billion dollars. The licensing fee is a few dollars per item and the global demand for the product is billions.

Alternatively, someone leaves their current job at a tech company to work for Google, who pays them 20% more than they were earning before. Are they overpaid based on the market or fairly paid, or underpaid since Google is so profitable (but actually uses very little labor, people use the software which once produced cost nothing to replicate.

Your view is very industrial revolution and Marxist (which is also a bit obsolete as it was developed during the industrial revolution when economies were largely based on farms and factories.

I was a "dishwasher" in college (to pay for college). I never found the job particularly hard. I was also the CEO of company with 42,000 health care workers, I found the job very stressful, but it paid great and when my heart started acting up, I retired.

My company had 300 locations. My top 20% of offices earned over 100% of the profits the other 80% collectively broke about even. I found the "manager" position the most valuable position in my company. So, I paid them a lower base than their regional VP bosses, but they had higher bonus potential and most of those 20% of the managers earned more than their boss. One asked me why she shouldn't get at least the same pay level as her subordinate. I told her if she wanted to go back to being a branch manager, I had a couple of dozen openings and she could accept a 40% cut in base pay with the potential an unlimited amount of income through the manager bonus system (which paid out monthly). She declined.

I audited a $9 billion dollar insurance company at the start of my careeer. The highest paid employee one year was one of their salesmen, who earned just over $20 million in commissions by selling the largest private New York company owners, Key Man insurance with a $50 million-dollar annual premium for seven years. He earned many times what the CEO or his manager did.

You work in the restaurant business. If I ran a restaurant and your restaurant had a better dishwasher and mine was bad, I would call up your dishwasher and offer them a job at higher pay. At my health care company we hired around 6000-7000 people annually since our turnover was around 20% a year. As part of the hiring process we would ask employees who were the best people they worked for and worked with and why. When we saw the same name coming up regularly, we targeted that person to try to hire them.

I will be the first person to agree that some people are overpaid, and some are underpaid. But profits have nothing to do with that, in fact, I had a compensation strategy as an executive to intentionally overpay great workers (golden handcuffs) and under pay bad workers (hoping they would find a better job elsewhere, so you didn't go through the risk of being accused when trying to terminate an employee). I told my Board that good employees were worth 20-25% above market, but the truth is most people are average and average people earned average compensation.

I also was very proactive at developing measures of productivity in the early 2000s, so I could create work at home jobs (I identified college educated stay at home moms as a super underutilized work force). But without a way to measure productivity, it was hard to employ them, since their schedules were so hectic. It worked and we began to attract talented "moms" to work part-time on non-time sensitive work.

In Seattle, I built two handicap units in my clerical processing departments. The first one specialized was designed for deaf people and the second for those in wheelchairs. This requires a lot of extra investment due to safety and ergonomic issues, but I found once you made the initial investment, these employees had very low turnover and would never leave because no other company provided them the work environment we did.

In my first management job, I identified single African American moms as an underutilized workforce. So, I built a data entry operating on a bus line stop from their inner-city apartments near a childcare facility and provided extremely flexible hours for childcare emergencies including the ability to come in on the weekend or work longer hours to help them work around their parenting responsibilities without losing pay.

The point is good employers do things to attract good employees. That extends to more flexible working situations and better pay. Government makes it a bit harder to do that these days, since bad workers think they are earning less for reasons unrelated to their work ethic and talents.

With respect to your last line. I don't agree that any full-time job should be able to support a family of four at a reasonable standard of living. That would require based on government statistics over $80K a year and benefits. In some cities, like San Francisco, that would require $120K or more. I do agree our educational system should provide people access to acquire the skills to earn enough to support a family of four. Creating an opportunity for people to earn enough to support their families is important but forcing up wages for low value jobs simple drives up inflation. My old country club provided free baby sitting so members could enjoy dinner in the restaurant... if those high school children earn the equivalent compensation needed to support a family of four, the whole service would have collapsed.

Also, when you go into a store, how often do you buy something based on how much an employer pays his or her employees. Many American companies have gone broke because most consumers especially low-income consumers shop on price not the wages the company pays its consumers. You may or may not know, that at one time, Walmart advertised that all its products were "Made in America", but these days almost none are... since low-income consumers want low prices. Hence those full-time jobs have moved overseas.

I do agree full time workers should earn more than people that don't work and should have access to health care (since people who don't work do). But that is a societal issue not an employment issue. Employers should pay what a job is worth to them, and employees should take jobs that pay them the best. Then all of us should subsidize low-income workers to the "living wage" we collectively agree is the minimum people should get for working full time. Again, the middle class will likely shoulder this cost, so what people consider a minimum living wage should be based on what they are willing to pay for themselves, not someone else like the rich or corporate America (they will contribute like everyone else, but the bulk of the cost will be carried by the middle class).

Europe with is more socialized system has a VAT (sales tax of nearly 20%), so everyone including the unemployed help to fund their entitlement when they buy something.