Although it's stretching far outside this immediate generational discussion, he premise that employers should profit by always paying employees less than the va

Although it's stretching far outside this immediate generational discussion, he premise that employers should profit by always paying employees less than the value they generate is itself the very definition of capitalist exploitation. There's absolutely no reason this type of profit-driven employment relationship is the only way to structure a successful economy for a society. Anyway, to the exact topic at hand: The consolidation of power by corporations and capital basically means a different power structure. We can accept the profit premise and still recognize that the employees' pay goes up and down in relation to their power in the relationship. Before unions, employers were happy to pay poverty wages and profit handsomely. Yes, there's a point where no profit or actual loss means they can't keep the employee, but there's a huge margin between the cheapest dirt pay you can get a desperate immigrant to accept and the pay you can manage to pay an organized, powerful union employee while still profiting. The power balance between employees and employers has changed over the last couple generations with the rise of unions and public works and minimum wage and worker protection laws and then today's conglomerations of oligarchies and the undermining of unions and of laws that protect workers' interests.