I dont think you can put "supply and demand aside" because the market wages are by definition of where supply meets demand. ROI is a different concept -- you a

I dont think you can put "supply and demand aside" because the market wages are by definition of where supply meets demand. ROI is a different concept -- you are right that someone needs to generate ~1.2M$ to be worth paying $300k. But that does not mean there is a shortage, it means the business is not a viable business. Consider this example -- I'm going to create cars and sell them for $5000. I need a crew of 10 people, paid $500/yr. I cant find any crew willing to accept that. That doesnt mean there is a shortage of auto workers. It means I'm not paying enough. Just because I've come up with a faulty business (selling cars for $5000) does not mean that people must work for me for peanuts. It means my business is flawed because it relies on underpaid workers. Also, w/r/t you increasing a pay rise for burger flippers - that is not how businesses function. Business would not generally raise salaries as long as they could find workers at depressed salaries. If they did, their Board of Directors would quickly fire the CEO. You could choose to do this for your own company, but that is not representative of how large or most companies work. Companies are constantly hiring McKinsey or Towers Perrin to benchmark labour costs to ensure they are paying as little as possible.