Hmmmmm....
Well, my little brother told me point blank that everyone deserves a living wage. Poppycock.
They don’t deserve anything.
They get what they negotiate for and what the job is worth.
For instance: McDonalds....How much right brain does it take to press buttons or wait for a buzzer to tell the fries are ready or now you must turn a burger over?
Seriously, if McDonalds finds them selves paying $15 dollars an hour for burger flippers and my hamburgers start costing me $10 I’m at Smith and Wolensky where they they will serve a “Fat” burger with plank style fries and I can get it rare the way I like it.
Oh, and no salt on my food, another way I like to order my food.
Grocery clerks will absolutely be replaced with only a few for those who just have to interact with other human beings.
I see a “Self Checkout”, I’m there and out of the store, lickity split.
Low level skill jobs pay low level wages. You want moh muhnny, then get your azz to work and figure what it takes to get the skills you need, learn them and then go get that job that pays $100k so you can be a big shot.
It’ll put you in the top 7% as well, of all wage earners and you buy all that stuff you thought people were lucky to have, only to learn they, like you, worked their sorry asses off to get where they are, took a lot of other peoples Shiite, got bumped and scrapped...but, hey...we think we’re happy..with our stuff and facades of happiness.
They won’t figure it out until later in life that no one really cares about the stuff you buy. They aren’t impressed and you are not really interesting.
Better to want more but to want to do more interesting things and build great friendships and family.
I prefer to go for a walk in the woods or walk along the shoreline of the Pacific.
God speaks to me there....
And yet the starting pay for a new McDonalds shift supervisor is 40% more than what the company in the OP wants to pay someone with much more technical skill.
I encourage to keep taking long walks in the woods, away from the computer.