In particular, there's a fundamental constraint we need to remember: in order for people to buy things with their wages, those things must be produced. That is

In particular, there's a fundamental constraint we need to remember: in order for people to buy things with their wages, those things must be produced. That is to say, it's not possible for businesses across the economy to just decide to pay everyone better in real, inflation-adjusted terms of what they can actually afford to buy with their income and make everyone better off, because that doesn't magically make more stuff spring into existence to purchase. There's a kind of thinking I see a lot in these threads where there's no labour shortage, businesses just need to pay better and if they don't then they don't deserve to continue existing as a business, framing this as evil businesses jsut complaining about not being able to keep their non-viable business models going anymore. The thing is, this misses the other side: a lot of those businesses produce stuff that consumers want, and if they're no longer viable any more then that consumer demand cannot be filled at the price people were willing to pay, again decreasing the value of people's income in real what-they-can-buy terms.