Wage won't entirely fix this. As long as artificial inflation (and yes, the majority of these price hikes are due to simple greed: https://fortune.com/europe/2023/12/08/greedflation-study/ ) keeps going up in such a short span of time, the majority smaller businesses will not be able to afford to keep giving their employees raises. The core issue is monopolies/duopolies and/or price collusion in the industries where a very small handful of corps own everything. Yes, it's illegal for companies to get together and agree on prices for their own profit, but that's never stopped them from doing it before as it's incredibly difficult for the government to prove they're doing it without breaking laws to spy on them.

We're essentially reliving the Robber Baron Era from US history. Unfortunately, I don't see us exiting it anytime soon, as people are way too divided and angry at each other to turn that fury towards the ones sowing it in the first place while they rob us blind. Eat the fucking billionaires, because they're already eating us.

Maybe it's both.