What jobs??? What jobs should people not make enough to cover their basic living expenses if they work a 40 hour week? What people are supposed to live like peons??? Is it fast food workers? Sorry, but this is no longer the day when Pop’s was the only hamburger joint in town, and the local high school kids worked there to earn a few bucks to fix up their 1938 hot rod or something for the High School Sock Hop. Nope, it is 2019 and a whole lot of people work in those businesses now. And, if the business and the customers don’t pay a fair wage/price, then they basically just want cheap labor.
A job that requires no training and does not have much marketable value. That is the kind of job (Burger Flipper) that cannot, and should not, provide a living wage. This is why people better themselves, get an education and learn a trade. So they can obtain more marketable and valuable skills and earn more money. If all work provided everything that we need to live, then where would the incentive be to improve oneself?
No one who works is a Peon. There is honor in a days work. But, some work is more valuable than other work. If ALL work provides a living wage, then eventually, due to inflation, very little will. These are the laws of economics, like it or not.
However, you miss the important part of the equation, and that is skilled positions are going to demand more in compensation as a result of unskilled positions creeping more towards their earning levels. We have seen this for decades now, so we have actual empirical data that bears this to be true.
You may find this unfair, but by design these are are incentives to work harder and learned skills that will be desired by employers.
In my business the only people who earn the minimum, currently $11 per hour,are high school students. When does a student who would like to work counted as unemployed?