All these people saying we should just pay workers more, they don't realise it's part of a conveyor belt, if you start paying people more they'll start expecting more pay every time work increases or you need them to work longer hours or travel further for their job.

Si

Good

Dead-end talking point. 100% obselete. This one expired like 20 years ago OP, check the dates next time.

So let me get this straight - if our system has a problem that impacts workers financially, and the problem's not their salary... Then what is it? Clearly low wages arent the only reason for massive poverty these days, so it must be a flaw of our wider economic system, right? The only other option is that workers have poor spending habits, but that's too individualized to change the course of capitalism. So it must be a systemic issue. If paying workers more money somehow doesn't "fix" capitalism (true), then the inequality is more or less by design. Not put there deliberately per se, but allowed to continue for the sake of profit.

There's a clear, almost perfectly distinct hierarchy in modern society that's entirely based on wealth. Try to use any other model to describe our world, and you'll always come back to wealth. So if youre looking for the root of workplace inequality, of pretty much all other types of inequality, there it is.